Robert Brooks (Criminal Justice) and Alain Blunt of University of Massachusetts Dartmouth presented a paper at the International Visual Sociology Association’s annual conference in Pittsburgh in June 2014.
The paper is titled “Flyaway Girls and Grounded Boys: Gendered Text and Image in Infant Clothing.” It is based on a qualitative content analysis of infant clothing offered by major retailers.
Overall, Brooks and Blunt found that the clothing demonstrates what amounts to a practice of “gender branding” that almost invariably constructs and reinforces rigid, essentialist notions of gender.