This Mom Doesn’t Get All The Hate For The “Sad Beige Baby” Aesthetic

At this point, a lot of us are familiar with “sad beige clothes for sad beige children,” both the excellent TikTok account and, like, the overall concept. Everywhere you look, it seems neutral-toned baby clothes, toys, and accessories are flooding the market.

Nurseries are starting to look like a picky toddler’s dinner plate: everything is simple shades of brown and white with nary a color to be seen. TikTok creator Jules (@julesandthevibe) has been a certified hater of the trend... but recently extended a little bit of grace to those who “fall down the biege pipeline.”

“I have been openly and strongly against the beige mommy blogger aesthetic,” she begins. “I think it’s dumb as f*ck to have everything of your kids fit a certain aesthetic and to be the color scheme of essentially cream, beige, and white. ... but I will say this as someone now currently with child: it is so f*cking hard to find clothes or just general sh*t that is not so aggressively gendered that I understand why people fall down the beige pipeline.”

“You go into a ... a baby clothing store,” she elaborates, “and there is a blue side of the store and there is a pink side of the store. They are offering nothing in terms of diversity of color. I can’t get blues on the pink side of the store, and I can’t get pinks on the blue side of the store.”

She still stands by the idea that curating an entirely earth-toned aesthetic for your baby to match your own is ridiculous (“who gives a f*ck ... get a grip”), but she understands how it may be a movement born of exhaustion with the pink and blue status quo.

“Because you’re basically being offered at all times either unicorns or trucks. ... I knew things were gendered, I’ve walked down the toy section of the store, I’m not a fool. But, it’s so bizarre to me that I can’t find just normal clothes for my baby that just are normal colors.”

Honestly, we get it, too.

It’s not just the colors, either: it’s the distinctly masculine and feminine colors, plus the motifs, plus the cut. Whomst among us hasn’t seen a 2-year-old boy in a shirt that says “Lady’s Man” or a literal newborn girl in a onesie that says “My Daddy Says No Boyfriends.” And I’m pretty sure a part of my soul died forever the day I had to buy my 4-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter the same size pants because the girls’ shorts cut that much tinier than the boys’ and I wanted them to cover her bum. (Yes, I also just bought her boy pants, but I liked the color of the ones from the girl section and, as established, I couldn’t get that color from the boys’ section.)

“There’s always two different dynamics, and you’re either getting one or the other. I just can’t get a regular shirt,” Julies concludes, continuing. “So I get why people end up putting their babies in biege-ass clothes, because that’s about the only other color they offer that isn’t Pepto-Bismal pink or blue with ‘Lady Killer’ on the front. It’s bizarre.”

It is. And, look, there are great options out there for bright, not-gendered children’s clothes (I was always a mega-fan of Primary, among others), but sometimes you’ve really gotta look around to find them and. As a new parent, who has the time? So, yeah, beige is boring, but at least it’s not propping up the patriarchy...