The Boy
I read a blog recently in @ThinkOrBlue, here it is: What birth order taught me about gender stereotypes, it got me thinking about the differences between raising boys and girls without gender prejudices: at its heart letting them wear and play with whatever they like regardless of gender. Of course, in an ideal world there wouldn't be any differences, but there are, or there are for me. So I'm going to take a bit of time to reflect on myself, on my own parenting: we've got this girl power thing nailed, but what about the boy power?
Here's The Boy: gentle, kind, emotional, sensitive and entirely at peace with his 'feminine side'. I often wonder how on earth he will make it through this world in one piece. This is the boy who came home at age six and said 'I don't want to eat meat anymore, meat is made from animals, I don't want to eat animals'. He didn't even know such a thing existed: he'd never heard of a vegetarian. This is the boy who at age five said he wanted 'a big boy baby [doll]' for his birthday. This is the boy who still (at nine) loves having his toe nails painted.
Job done, you might think! Clearly he's been taught to connect with his emotions, that there's no such thing as 'boys’ toys'. Well, yes. He has. BUT, it is and was easier with my daughter. Much easier.
Big Baby
Big Baby was our first real challenge. When your oldest child is a girl, it's super easy for your son to play with her toys, and he wants to because he adores her and everything about her. Pushchairs, dolls house, cooker - all a walk in the park. And there's something terribly cute about baby and toddler boys playing with 'girls'' toys. In the main, his interests and play style have always been pretty gender conforming. By this I mean that while both my children loved the toy trains he would line them up and crash them, while she would have them talking to each other. He played with the box of Barbies, but often they were cargo in the back of a ride-on tractor, or flying at speed on a rocket down the slide. Both my children pushed dollies around the garden in the play buggy, but he was usually shouting and crashing into the fence when she would talk to them and carefully wrap them in a blanket. Then I asked him what he wanted for his (5th) birthday: when he said he wanted a doll my heart stopped. If my daughter had asked for a toy crane, I would have been delighted and even smug with my gender neutral approach. But I was so afraid he would be teased, that in his pride he would tell other children about his birthday present and he would be bullied. My husband and I discussed it: were we sure it was what he really wanted? To my shame, I bought a superhero outfit for Big Baby (the doll) to wear so that when he was introduced to other boys, they would be less likely to tease him: a success or a failure?
Nails glorious nails
He's always loved having his nails painted. When he was small, we lived in Vietnam, and he was cared for at home by our awesome nanny, as we both worked full time. She had a glorious bag full of sparkly nail polish that both my children loved. We were absolutely happy for him to run about with his deliciously chubby little toes painted in whatever colours he chose. He was a toddler, it was cute. Oh how sanctimoniously easy it was to avoid gender stereotypes when he was little! Then a few months ago, out of the blue he said 'When are we going to paint my nails again?'. He's nine. I'd assumed he had moved on, but apparently not. So, I brightly said 'Right now' and smiled. As he sorted through the box of colours I thought 'Don’t choose pink, please don't choose pink'. In my mind's eye I could see him at the swimming pool in his breaststroke class showing off his glitter pink toes and being reduced to tears by their laughter. As it was, I was relieved he wanted blue toes, like water, and for me to paint a turtle onto his big toes because turtles are good swimmers like him. He's delighted with his turtle toes and so am I: a success or a failure? By chance on our way out of the swimming pool last week I walked past a little boy, about 6 years old, holding onto the hand rail. I noticed his fingernails were painted and sparkly. It made me smile. There are lots of boys like my boy; perhaps I worry too much about him being teased?
Girl Power Vs Boy Power
In our society, there's nothing strange about putting a girl in a boy's t-shirt, that's what unisex t-shirts are: girls in t-shirts shaped and designed for boys. Whenever someone says 'why aren't there any dinosaur t-shirts for girls?' the response is always 'Just buy them in the boys’ section'. However, although I have definitely seen folk write 'Where are the unicorn t-shirts for boys?’, I've never seen a response that says 'Just buy them in the girls’ section'.
As a society, we're much better at accepting girls wearing 'boys’' clothes than boys wearing 'girls'’ clothes, likewise with toys. How many of you would let your daughters wear a Spiderman costume at Halloween, but find it harder to let your sons wear an Elsa dress? I would definitely let my son wear an Elsa dress, but I would find it much harder now that he's older than I did when he was younger. There, I’ve said it. It's harder for me. But that doesn't mean I can't do it. I am a product of my culture, my experiences, my upbringing. So are you. I'm not a terrible parent because I take a deep breath before painting my son's toes pink.
When something is difficult we have to work harder at it. When my children say (about all kinds of things) 'But Mummy, it's hard', I say 'You can do hard things': I can do hard things too.
Thanks for reading my blog. I hope you enjoyed it.
New Designs
Here are a few of my latest t-shirt designs for you to enjoy!
TARDIS Inspired T-Shirt for Girls
I Love Lorries T-Shirt for Girls
My other blog posts
If you like this blog, you can check out my other blogs using the links below:
It's time to be honest about being a first time mum
Why so many women fail at returning to full time work after maternity leave
Pitfalls of working from home as a business owner career mum
A Sizeable Debate - why girls' sizing makes me mad
What About The Boys? - why I only design for girls
My website
Scarf Monkey 'Inspiring designs for aspirational girls'
]]>For her school project, my daughter (the chicken) decided to study the differences between girls and boys t shirts in our local shops. I knew what to expect ... but frankly I was quietly disturbed by the extent of the problem.
Before I tell you about my take on our adventures, why don't you listen to hers? Here's a video we made about her school project.
School projects are the pits
I'm going to be rather controversial now (I may even make a few enemies): I hate primary school research projects. Everyone knows that project work always includes homework for mummies, and I resent the assumption that I can be set homework, or that my time at home with my children is insufficiently purposeful so I need bonding tasks, or that my family time is fair game for anyone outside of my family. But, in the interests of picking my battles and trying super-hard not to be 'that parent', I take a deep breath and we get the job done!
Added to which, there are always two projects, but only one me.
An easy life
So, the chicken and I picked girl power t shirts because it's something we know a bit about: I've been designing girl power t shirts for the last 18 months and the chicken has been my model all that time.
Our first objective, was the research itself. I certainly wasn't about to open the internet to the chicken in random google searches, who knows what might pop up in a search for strong women's clothes! So we headed out to the local shops, camera phone in hand.
What we found
The chicken has been wearing nothing but Scarf Monkey t shirts for a while now - all the girls t shirts from our photo-shoots just end up in her wardrobe, so I'd rather forgotten how much gushing and pinkness there is on girls t shirts. I'm not remotely against pink ... when it's just a colour. I'm definitely against pink when it's used to define femininity. Here's some examples of what we found:
It's not all pink, but it is overwhelmingly pink, and overwhelmingly pale. Maybe I've a heightened sensitivity to it, but to me pale clothes for little girls just say 'don't stand out, don't make a mess, don't make a noise'. I try and use fuchsia if something is pink, rather than pale pink in my designs (though there are of course exceptions!).
When I was looking through the photographs we had taken, to choose some for this blog, I was struck by how hard it was to read what was written on the girls t shirts in thumbnail form, but the boys t shirts were much clearer: both the background and the text of the girls t shirts were pale, the writing wasn't designed to stand out ... the girls t shirts were speaking more quietly! And I really didn't like what they were saying - surely we can change the world with a vote, with actions, with decisions: with a smile ... not so much. Also, I wish the boys t shirts also said 'happy and kind' that would be lovely. See if you agree:
The things they say!
I can't even begin to explain how awful the difference is in the actually words on the t shirts. Lots of the boys t shirts say things like 'I'm awesome' or 'You're lucky I'm so awesome', this was rare on girls t shirts. We did find one girls t shirt for an older girl that said just 'awesome', but the 'o' was a sequined heart shape, which diminished the effect rather, but it was something.
There were a fair few t shirts which were disguised as girl power t shirts, but they missed the mark (in my not terribly humble opinion). These seem to have powerful statements, but are mostly just persuading girls to believe in themselves, whereas the boys' tees were more likely to say 'everyone already knows I'm awesome'. Do you agree?
Girl power t shirts
There were definitely some attempts at girl power t shirts - I don't much like the phrase girl power (even though I use it) because it suggests that the power comes from being a girl, whereas boy power is just power, it comes from being human. Nevertheless, there were some sterling efforts at girl power t shirts. Asda had the most: George at Asda is trying the hardest at this. What do you think?
Boys t shirts don't talk about boy power, they talk about just getting things done - a kind of 'obviously I have the power' t shirt.
It's not so much that any one of these t shirts is awful, or dreadful (except the one that says 'I need the wifi code, like now' which is dreadful), more that the whole of them together, the pattern they make is awful. Collectively they create a lack of choice. It's not that t shirts saying 'I love flowers' shouldn't exist, just why should they be only on girls clothes, and why should there not also be sharks and crocodiles for girls? It's not that 'Let's get things done' shouldn't be on a boys t shirt, but why shouldn't it be on a girls t shirt?
It's the lack of parity I don't like, and the strange idea that some things belong only on girls t shirts - like unicorns and mermaids. If unicorns and mer-people were real, then I'm pretty sure 50% of them would be male, so why aren't they featuring on boys t shirts? Sharks and crocodiles and dinosaurs are all 50% female, so why are they only on boys t shirts? Do we only need girl power t shirts? Why not boy power t shirts?
The chicken
Back to the school project. The chicken asked if she could design her own girl power t shirts as part of her project. She got the idea from a display on her classroom wall - which is very reassuring! I'm not sure they really are girl power t shirts, more just be empowered t shirts, in fact I'm going to go ahead and make one for my son too (and one for myself) I think she did a pretty good job. They've already started selling nicely on Scarf Monkey.
Scarf Monkey's girl power t shirts
These are the most like girl power t shirts I've designed on Scarf Monkey: you'll have to decide if they do a better job than the ones I said I didn't like!
Suffragettes T Shirt & Superhero Girl T Shirt
Evolution of Woman T Shirt & Mary Shelley T Shirt
I hope you've enjoyed this blog about girl power t shirts. I'd love to know what you think too!
My other blog posts
If you like this blog, you can check out my other blogs using the links below:
It's time to be honest about being a first time mum
Why so many women fail at returning to full time work after maternity leave
Pitfalls of working from home as a business owner career mum
A Sizeable Debate - why girls' sizing makes me mad
What About The Boys? - why I only design for girls
My website
Scarf Monkey 'Inspiring designs for aspirational girls'
]]>The story of a design
Instead of a prince, she found a sword
I have an emotional attachment to each of my designs. I can remember where and why an idea came to me, and I can picture myself drawing it and remember the frustrations of trying to achieve a particular effect. The first time someone buys one I get a bit teary, because it means they like what I did, and they share a tiny piece of my soul.
This design came to me in two stages. I had been mulling over various phrases for a while, things like: 'Why be a princess when you can be a warrior?' or 'fight like a girl', something to contrast a stereotypical princess with a fighting spirit. It was pretty much on the back burner while I waited for a epiphany about what it would look like.
The sword safely in a local museum
Then, one day I was work-avoiding by reading the news when I came across this article about a little girl in Sweden called Saga Vanecek who had found an ancient Viking sword in a lake while swimming with her family in the summer. It conjured up images of the Legend of King Arthur and his sword Excalibur which was thrown into a lake. My daughter was very excited by the article, and said I should draw the girl with a sword, and that we should write to her and send her a t-shirt.
So we did!
I researched the clothing of Viking girls and the shape of Viking swords and finally came up with this design.
It says 'Instead of a prince, she found a sword'. I even have it in Swedish too!
My daughter wrote a letter to Saga, and I scoured the internet for an idea of where to send it. Eventually I settled on the museum where Saga and her father had donated the sword. We sent a grey t-shirt (I wasn't sure if she was a pink kind of girl, and better safe than sorry). Soon enough I received an email from Saga's father and shortly after my daughter received a lovely hand written letter from Saga.
Saga re-visiting the lake where she found the sword.
This is definitely one of my more popular designs, and many sales have come from the friends and family of Saga in the US - she has some very loyal followers 'All Hail Queen Saga, the first of her name'!
I hope you've enjoyed reading the story of this design, you can read Saga's story in her own words here.
Hasta la proxima, until the next time.
Emma x
Check out my other designs at Scarf Monkey
]]>We need to be honest
This month marks ten years since the birth of my first child. For me, this is a good time to reflect on what that experience was really like. It's time we started sharing more honestly, because maybe, just maybe, we can make it easier for those who come after us.
I hardly know where to begin. Frankly it's rather frightening to commit some of these things to paper (metaphorically speaking), because there are unwritten rules that say we must 'treasure every moment' of our babies. I have never, and I will never say such a pernicious thing as 'remember to treasure every moment' to a new mother. Never.
I think I was traumatised by the experience. The long term psychological effects although minor, are real and measurable. For example, although I still find new babies cute, I feel a huge wave of relief they are not mine: the relief is much stronger than the cuteness. When I see a first time mum carrying a tiny baby, partner in tow, on what is clearly their first trip to the supermarket since the birth, I feel a wave of sympathy. I hold back the urge to stop these complete strangers and tell them that they will be okay, they will make it through to the other side, that I understand how much harder it is than they expected. If the mother looks a little unwashed, or a little stressed, I begin to well up.
The easy bit
Despite fairly hideous and lengthy morning sickness (morning ... ha!) it was a text book pregnancy. I had few fears about giving birth and, as it turns out, my body and I were rather good at it. I had a home birth and after 18 or so hours of labour, during which time my husband watched the whole series of Billy Connolly's Tour of New Zealand, she popped out 'like a greased piglet' ... my husband's exact words. If I was expecting a rush of love it didn't happen: I don't know when it happened exactly, but it crept up slowly over the next day or so. Anyway, my husband made brunch for the four midwives ... there are always two at a home birth, one for mother one for baby, and both of mine came with a student in tow! By lunch time, they had gone and we were in bed eating pizza. The chicken slept through most of that day and that night, and I woke up at 5am feeling pretty damn good. That was the last time I slept through the night for years.
We call her 'the chicken'. We also call other people's children chickens, as in 'How many chickens do they have?'. Like all nick names, its origin is rooted in our shared history. Long before we were married I would say 'When we have children ...' and my husband would interrupt with 'chickens!' which was short hand for 'Don't count your chickens before they are hatched'. So, as we lay in bed that day eating pizza, I said 'So, that's one chicken then?', to which he replied in the voice of The Count from Sesame Street 'One ... one chicken ... ha ha ha'. And we were happy.
The first couple of weeks were pretty much what we had expected, the usual rounds of feeds and poonamis: we both came from families with many children and babies, so we felt pretty confident. Gradually though, we were worn down. This baby simply didn't sleep. At about six weeks or so I think I was the most miserable I have ever been in my life, before or since. On one Sunday afternoon, to help her settle I put her in her pram, and walked her to the park. She screamed the whole way. I felt watched and judged. And to be perfectly honest, I couldn't bear the sound a moment longer. Her crying was at the exact pitch that made my right ear buzz. And she cried a lot. If fact, when she was awake, which was mostly, she mostly cried. I called my husband to come and collect me, which he duly did. Then I put her in her bouncy chair and just glared at her with pure venom for about half an hour.
New dad
For weeks my husband struggled too. He physically did everything good husbands are supposed to do and more. But he didn't have a connection with her the way I did. To be brutally honest, he didn't love her yet. He didn't say so: I knew because I knew. It was devastating. I would worry for hours on end that he would never love her, even though we never discussed it. I thought I would have to leave him, because I couldn't subject her to a father who didn't want her, even though he never said any such thing. I wondered more than once if I had made a terrible mistake in having her. Those were dark days. Luckily for me, I had a colleague with two year old twin boys who told me that her husband didn't connect with her twins until they were 9 months old: that she had felt the same desperation. Her sharing gave me context and staying power. Sharing is important. It can be everything.
I think for my husband, his life changed when she was born: he immediately moved to the bottom of the pile. That takes some getting used to. But for me, my life changed when I became pregnant: I had already been making sacrifices long before she came, so it was more natural. And of course I had the benefit of hormones forging an invisible bond between us, replacing the umbilical cord which had literally made us one for nine months. To me, she was as much a part of me as my own lungs: I needed her like I needed to breathe. For him, it would take longer, but the bond grew just as strong as mine in time. Why does no one tell you that? It's important. Not to mention the fact that I was handing him a screaming colicky baby the very second he walked through the door each evening: in truth I had already been waiting for him for hours by then.
The best kind of help
I'd like to introduce you to the people who saved my sanity. My NCT group.
I didn't need birthing classes. I had already read everything that came with the classes, but I wanted company. However, at the first meeting, I honestly didn't know how I could ever have anything in common with any of these people. We were all so different. However, as the babies began to arrive and we began getting together every Tuesday at 11am, they became a lifeline. Of course, we've all drifted apart over ten years because ... life ... but there was a time when the company of those women was the saving grace of my week, and each of their babies truly felt like one of my own.
In the NCT class we were six couples. Shortly after the babies arrived we grew to nine. We collected new mothers and swept them into our group as if they had always been there. The first addition was H, collected in a baby massage class. She was by far the youngest of us all, so when she invited us all to her house for lunch when it was her 'turn' we whispered if we should offer to bring lunch along, or if it was fair to expect her to cope with a turn. H was a lesson in not judging a book by its cover. I grew to admire her tremendously. She had a small but immaculate home, always produced home baking and proved to be an incredibly natural, attentive and dedicated mother. So our six women became nine, with six baby girls and three baby boys.
It was clear early on that the chicken was not like the other babies in our group. I felt as if I were constantly surrounded by other people's contented sleeping babies, while the chicken was always awake, and even when she didn't cry, she was alert like a meerkat, always looking around and fascinated by every little movement. Years later, one of the other mothers wrote to me after having her second daughter (we were living in Vietnam by this time). She said 'I always felt sorry for you, as I could see you were having a really hard time. But now that I've had C, I realise I didn't feel nearly sorry enough!'. Here is her second baby, all grown up, wearing a Scarf Monkey t-shirt! Perfect.
Instead of a Prince, she found a sword t-shirt
When the chicken was about 8 weeks old, we decided that she would go to nursery for two lots of three hours every week. I needed to sleep and we didn't know how else to achieve this. Of course, I didn't actually sleep. Any new mother can tell you the pain leaving your baby causes is excruciating. So instead, I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if she would be crying the whole time, knowing I was a terrible mother for leaving her when I had nothing else to do. Even this was a welcome relief: better than actually listening to her crying. At that time, it was hard to know if being with her or without her was more painful.
Breast feeding
It was about that time I gave up breastfeeding. It was making me house bound. Breast feeding caused me no pain and I had oodles and oodles of milk, but she was so distracted by every little movement and sound that feeding in any kind of noisy environment became impossible. She was constantly pulling away and looking around. I started planning to always be home for her feeds, so we could be in a quiet, dark room. There was more to it than that though. She was losing weight. She had what the health visitors and doctors call 'just reflux'. 'Just reflux' meant that she vomited most of her milk every time. ‘Just reflux’ meant that she was always hungry, always too hungry to sleep, and always too tired to eat. ‘Just reflux’ meant she was always in pain with colic and a poor digestive system. ‘Just reflux’ meant every week when I took her for a weigh-in the health visitor would shake her head and interrogate me about how much she was eating, and muse over whether we needed to see a doctor, sometimes deciding we did. The doctor would declare it to be 'just reflux' and we would go around in circles again.
One day, I decided to express a little milk and instead of milk I produced eight straight ounces of cloudy pink liquid (the thirst quenching foremilk) before, eventually, the heavy nutrition rich hindmilk came. I stared at the full bottle of pinky liquid and felt sick. She never drank that much, so was she never getting to the nutrition rich, thicker milk she needed? Was I just producing too much? Was this causing her reflux? Was I poisoning her? This time the doctor prescribed Infant Gaviscon, which comes in powder form, and has the delayed effect of turning the milk in babies’ stomach into jelly. It makes it easier for them to keep it down. If you are breast feeding, you dissolve it in boiled water and squirt it down their throat with a syringe before feeding them, or if you are bottle feeding, you just add it to the bottle. We tried the first just once. She screamed blue murder and turned purple. 'That's it! I'm never breast feeding again' I said.
Here is the chicken (left), a little jaundiced, caught in a rare moment of peace with my best friend's daughter. I had driven to London to visit, desperate for some advice from a friend who had had her second baby. At the point I left home, the chicken, and therefore we, had been awake for 24 hours straight.
Here they are again (the other way around) nearly ten years later!
Fingerprint t-shirt & Evolution of Cycling t-shirt
The health visitor made her disapproval of my bottle feeding clear. But the Gaviscon and bottle feeding were the beginning of us beginning to cope. She continued to be too small, too thin with too little sleep, but she improved. At 16 weeks all the health visitors started saying 'It'll get better when she is weaned', while declaring the benefits of exclusive baby led weaning (give me strength). At this point, I was gaining confidence and gaining skepticism too. Not one of these people, with all their disapproving advice, was the person at home with the skinny, screaming baby. I made my last visit to a health visitors' clinic at 18 weeks. I had been giving her baby rice for a week and she gained half a pound and had cried less. 'Oh well done' pronounced the sour old bat 'What did you do?'. When I said I had added baby rice to her milk she turned pale with horror and said I mustn't give her anything to eat until she was six months old. I went home deflated. After much thought, I decided we would be much happier without any more advice than without the baby rice, so we never went back. When she was six months old we started all food with a fury; I even researched which foods had the most fat and the most calories. So, she ate avocado, fromage frais and cheese in copious amounts, and finally she grew healthy. It was a full year before she stopped vomiting all the time and before we stopped giving her Infant Gaviscon, but she had, by then, become a happy, if still rather over-alert, little firework.
By the time we reached this one year milestone, I was already four months pregnant. No really. When the chicken was about 16 weeks old, I said to my husband 'We need to get pregnant straight away'. You'll understand his skepticism, but I explained 'This is awful right?' he nodded. 'Well I don't want an only child' he nodded again, we both have many siblings, 'so ... when this gets better, we'll never want to go back, we'll never do it again: right now, we have nothing left to lose!'. The gap between my children is 17 months. It would have been smaller, but there was a miscarriage in between - something so incredibly common, we should definitely talk about it more too.
When 'the boy' was born, it was like I suddenly understood all those women who loved having babies! He was so gloriously fat, I had to clean between his folds in the bath; he was deliciously cuddly and endlessly, endlessly, endlessly happy. And he slept, oh my goodness he slept. Of course, it was partly us, more relaxed and frankly 'been there done that got the t-shirt', but to be honest, he was just different in his soul. He still is.
She was already herself
I can see now how much her personality was already there as a baby. She is still skinny and a little undersized for her age: she is not a fussy eater, she just has no capacity for volume. She's also super alert, absolutely nothing passes her by. Her ears are everywhere. She is distracted by, and interested in, everything. She scours 'YouTube Kids' to learn how to do new things - previously finger knitting, currently how to do french and dutch braids on her hairdressing head. She is fascinated by the details of childbirth, so we watch ‘Call the Midwife’ together. It's a rare opportunity to snuggle with my prickly cactus, and a good opportunity to discuss some of the difficult things in the world. My kitchen is regularly turned into Armageddon as she 'experiments' with what happens when you mix this with that and that with the other. She struggles with sleep still: staying awake late and waking up early, and we talk about how she can fill this time and manage this reality. And she talks and talks and talks.
Here they both are - see how her little brother is much bigger, and he's an inch taller - which just isn't fair of course!
Those hard days are long behind us. We have been in blissfully easy times for years now: even the boy's terrible-twos tantrum phase, while spectacular, was a walk in the park in comparison. We are parents for a long time. We cannot all be fabulous at all the different phases of our children's lives. We cannot all be fabulous mothers of babies, as we cannot all be fabulous mothers of teenagers. Perhaps some of us will not come into our own until our children are grown and flown, when suddenly we know how to nurture their independence with just the right touch.
And what of my NCT group? Hard times come to each of us for sure. Some have had miscarriages like me. Some are split from their children's fathers. Some struggled with second children, as yet none have three children, while one had such a traumatic birth that she was resolute in having only one. One was made redundant for being pregnant. Two have children on the autistic spectrum. One mother had a much harder time than me with her son's life threatening food allergies and severe eczema that left open wounds: she had a two hourly routine morning and evening with creams and treatments, he even had allergies to standard eczema creams and screamed when he was put in water, and her husband responded by working longer hours. She is one of the strongest women I have known; in truth I have nothing to complain about. Even the lovely H struggled when her first child started school, where her tireless determination has made all the difference to his progress. All are still alive, which is a blessing in itself.
What have I learnt?
One of my (many) cousins had a baby, and I sent her an email congratulating her. I also wrote and told her about my experience with the chicken. I heard nothing for a year. I wondered if I had offended her? Perhaps she was a hearth-mother-type who loved every minute and was offended by my suggestion that she might struggle? So, a year later I sent her son a birthday card in case bridges needed to be built. This time my cousin wrote back. She said it had been the hardest year of her life, but when she thought she couldn't cope, she would read my email and it made her feel better. I ugly cried when I read that: the revisited trauma, knowing the same thing happens to women everywhere, being so glad I had sent her that first message because I nearly didn't.
I have learnt to tell people about my experiences. Because sometimes they make a huge difference, they help people to feel less alone.
I have learnt never to presume what another mother is experiencing. Telling her about my experiences isn't the same as telling her about hers.
I have learnt that a mother's mental health is more important than most debates about breast/bottle feeding and weaning.
I have learnt never to tell people they should be enjoying their babies, or their children for that matter. We can't treasure every moment, that's ridiculous, there is absolutely nothing to treasure in some moments. We don't need to say 'treasure every moment' we can say 'How lovely, congratulations. I found it hard sometimes, is there anything you need?' instead.
I have learnt that every phase will pass. The good and the bad.
Post Script
Before making it public, I shared this blog with my old NCT group, and someone reminded me that I took the chicken to a Cranial Osteoath for babies. It was definitely a big help, she immediately slept more and cried less - overnight. It didn't 'fix ' her, but the improvement was remarkable.
This week
This week, I've been using a vintage effect to improve some of my designs. What do you think?
Thanks for reading!
Emma x
If you like this blog, you can check out my other blogs using the links below:
Why so many women fail at returning to full time work after maternity leave
Pitfalls of working from home as a business owner career mum
A Sizeable Debate - why girls' sizing makes me mad
What About The Boys? - why I only design for girls
A Complex Question
I feel in my bones that if we did a better job of helping women transition back into their careers after having children, the dreadful stats about women's comparative pay and women's representation in the highest echelons of business and society would improve. The hard work comes well before they get near the top of the greasy pole: it comes when they first have kids, more accurately the first time they return to full time work.
Let's take a step backwards to assess the whole picture for a moment. This is a massively complex issue, and there isn't one right answer, but many right answers, many circumstances I don't know anything about. I do know a fair bit about the subject though, as a mother who returned to work full time after maternity leave, an employer who had women in her team returning to work after maternity leave and then a mother who changed careers, partly to create a better environment for her family.
I'm definitely not going to give anyone 'the answer' here; I can't tell you about your life. I'm just going to talk about my own experiences. I'm also not going to include those women who don't want to go back to work full time, or restart their careers. I'm just focusing on those who wanted to, intended to, who tried, and maybe failed.
All about me me me!
I took two lots of maternity leave, 6 months each time, then picked up my career where I left off, barely missing a beat. How?
Circumstances, nothing more. It was absolutely miserable. Circumstances made me the main bread winner just as I became pregnant the first time.
Rewind ... I was very smug, as I had married a Structural Engineer. I was a teacher, and teachers marry teachers, so I was very cheerful about bucking the trend. Then within a month of getting married I was pregnant, and before the next month was out my husband said 'I don't want to be an engineer ... I want to be a teacher' 🤨. So while I had a new baby, and my husband was training to teach, I had to get straight back in full speed, and I needed to be earning enough to support us. There was no way I could 'go part time'.
What makes going back to work so hard?
Everyone 'knows' how hard it is when you have your first baby, but in reality people only think they know. Consider this: everyone knows what it's like to miss a night's sleep, but how can we describe what it's like to barely sleep for year?
My first child was a banshee. Here she is, lulling you into a false sense of security with her delicious cuteness:
She looks asleep, but don't be fooled. This child rarely slept, ate hardly anything and high-pitch-shrieked her way through her first 12 months in the world.
At 6 months old, maternity leave was done, and I was back full force into my middle management teaching job. I was extremely lucky. I had a super-supportive headteacher (appreciation here comes in retrospect, as I've since done his job), a super-supportive department and lots of other working mothers in my team. Despite this, it was hard. Really really hard. Given a choice, I would absolutely have swapped to part time.
The Guilt
The guilt was constant. Guilt about sending my baby to a nursery all day. Guilt about being too tired and grumpy to 'love every minute' with my daughter. Guilt about being a rubbish wife because we did nothing more than survive. Guilt about being pregnant again and needing a second maternity leave. Guilt about not being a shining light of optimism all the time for my team. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.
My husband was just as tired, just as busy, just as stressed, but he didn't feel remotely guilty. The guilt is a woman's burden. The guilt is definitely one reason women give up full time work, cut back, take a career step back, or stop work altogether. This is something we do to ourselves: it's a self-imposed purgatory.
Here she is today, looking every bit as perfect as her mother thinks she is, and half grown already in a heartbeat.
Pressure From Colleagues
New babies get sick a lot. All those germs to experience for the first time provide a great immune system for their future, but if your child is in a nursery, or with a childminder, the slightest little fever or cough and they are sent home. And there's nothing in the world gets sick as often as a baby going to nursery for the first time. And there's no one gets sick as much as a mother newly returned from maternity leave trying to do two full time jobs in the space for one. So mothers returning from maternity leave have more time off to care for their children, and they get sick more themselves too.
Often both parents share this load, often they share it equally: but colleagues don't see these absences equally. When a woman stays home to care for a sick child, her colleagues perceive this as her being unable to commit fully to her job, she is slacking. When I was a headteacher, I had teachers coming to me to complain about the number of absences a freshly returned from maternity leave mother was having. In reality, she and her husband were sharing the load absolutely equally, often swapping half way through the day to ensure the minimum impact on their respective teaching commitments. Only, the other teachers weren't just coming to me, they were whispering about it in corridors, then loudly sharing their grievances over after work beer (after work beer is entirely the domain of those without young children in child care) and going to HR to find out what the policy was on such absences. In staggering contrast, at her husband's school people were stopping him in corridors to congratulate him on how well he was balancing his commitment to his family, how much they appreciated how carefully he planned his schedule to meet his core commitments. His boss invited him in for a meeting to say how grateful the school was. For him, being committed to his family was good for his career, it made him appear more reliable, more stable. For her, being committed to her family made her a less reliable, less valued colleague. Her colleagues were not remotely bad people, not consciously prejudiced, but simply as subject to the unconscious bias of our society as the rest of us ... and they hadn't yet had any children of their own.
In truth this phase of increased absences is just that, a phase. Children develop a better immune system, mothers become accustomed to the load and just get tougher. If everyone weathers the storm, then after about a year it settles. Only by then, sometimes it's too late and the mother, feeling unwanted and incompetent, asks for a meeting to say 'I want to go part time'. I've worked hard as an employer to keep women in work full time past that first year, but I found that any interventions or supports I put in place were seen as playing favourite, blatant unfairness.
It's not fair!
On one occasion, I wrote a timetable that allowed a new mother to keep the first lesson of each day as 'non-contact' - her non-teaching time. This did nothing to reduce her work load, not so much as a stitch less, it just moved all her classes to after 08.40 each day. I wanted her to have five minutes peace each morning, a coffee perhaps alone in the staff room. It caused outrage. No, it caused rage.
Maybe it is unfair, but from my perspective her colleagues wake around 7am each day, having slept through the night, maybe after a few beers with friends the night before. Perhaps their partner will bring them coffee in bed, perhaps they even have time for a cuddle or some quick sex, or a morning run round the park, maybe breakfast together 'How would you like your eggs darling?' or 'Shall we stop at that new coffee place for a croissant on the way to work?'. The mornings for that mother on a good day start at around 5am with a fat nappied bottom in her face; usually she's already been up three times in the night - teaching your baby to sleep is a kind of voodoo after all. Then she showers rapidly with a toddler pressing her face against the glass 'Mummy look at me', and a baby screaming in the next room. This is only the start of the chaos, as the toddler rejects breakfast by throwing in on the wall and the baby has a poonami up her back - again. She gets three people ready, two of whom are hell bent on fighting her 'Where is your jumper, get your jumper, get your jumper, where is your jumper, I SAID GET YOUR JUMPER' , and she practically falls out of her front door carrying a baby in a car seat, her work bag in the other arm while needing a magical third arm to get the toddler in the car. She has eaten nothing, except perhaps the remnants of the toddler's breakfast, a soggy, pre-chewed toast soldier. Breakfast carnage is left as it ended, ready for her to clear up as she walks in the front door after a hard day's work, racing to the nursery to get the baby before 6pm because they charge an extra hour if you are five minutes late. Then she will tackle the breakfast debris - now encrusted into concrete - before starting dinner preparations, which has to be served before 6:30pm so the toddler won't fall asleep hungry and be up half the night.
Meanwhile, her colleagues are having a cooling beer in an outside cafe, bitching about favouritism because she left the after work meeting ten minutes early to collect her children and 'Shall we go to that cute new Italian place on the corner for dinner?'. When her husband leaves his after work meeting twenty minutes early to collect their children, it is to understanding smiles and whispers of 'He's such a good dad... bless'.
So she's tried coming back full time, it's relentlessly hard: she makes a meeting with her boss to say 'I'd like to go part time', and the world of education loses another potential leader, another potential headteacher, another potential Ofsted inspector, another potential educational consultant, workshop leader and advisor to the government. Once she's 'gone part time' her colleagues will assume her priorities are elsewhere, that she leaves her intellect at home each morning, she can't fulfill any promoted posts or responsibilities part time and she won't try working full time again until her kids are much much older, at least in Secondary School, likely not until they are teenagers. By then she will feel past it, like there are younger more lively candidates. Maybe she'll be a department head. Maybe not. Or, her boss can try to dissuade her and say 'I know it's hard, I've been there, I understand, what can I do to help?'.
My husband worked as a newly qualified teacher in a Science department with thirteen older women: all of them worked part time. Any one of them had the experience, skills and intellect to run a school, but the department head was a young man in his twenties, destined for greatness, unburdened by the judgement of his colleagues when he had children. Surely we are able to be more evolved than this?
Be flexible: in hours and in attitude
It's easy to say that flexible working is the answer, and often it is.
The problem is, that 'flexible working' is all about the person working different hours, the flexible working we need is the workings of other people's minds. A big giant bite of the problem is the attitude of colleagues and employers. We need a society where flexible working is normal.
If someone teaches the same thirty lesson week, what is it to anyone else if none of those classes take place at 08:00?
If one person does all their class preparation right after school in their classroom, going home at 6.30pm each evening, and someone else leaves at 3.30pm, goes home, then does all their preparation when their kids are in bed after 8pm, then what difference does it make to the quality of education they provide?
Quite frankly, the difference it makes is in other people's mind's. The latter gives the impression of taking the same money for less work: rushing off at 3.30pm just looks lazy. The former could be surfing the internet for all anyone knows, but they certainly appear to be committed and hardworking. We've all known people who studiously work on their social media input at their desk each evening, waiting until they've see the boss go home: 'Goodnight Sam, don't work too late', 'Nearly done boss, see you tomorrow'. That little trick is not in the options booklet of a mother with a baby at home, and there's no one watching at midnight as she finalises her presentation on her dining-room table.
My examples here are from the world of education, but you're smart people, you'll be able to find examples from your own line of work.
Who cares?
Why should we care? Women choose to have kids, they choose the sacrifice, they choose to work part time. Why should anyone else be flexible for that?
It's a fair question.
We should care because the men are choosing to have children too. In fact, just as many men have children as women, but it is women whose careers risk staggering to a slow plod.
We should care because women are 50% of the population, and without representation in the decision making ranks, then their interests are neglected everywhere: in politics, in education, in business, in consumerism.
We should care, because all the evidence says it's good for business; it will makes us richer in both meanings of the word.
We should care because as a society we all benefit from a society that self-propagates, whether or not we partake in that propagation. Children become our doctors, our politicians, our police officers. our scientists, our artists, our farmers, our road builder, our chefs, our leaders. Saying people should entirely carry their own child rearing burden is ridiculous, because if other people didn't have children, the world would be in a pretty sorry state for us all in our old age. It's like saying 'Why should my taxes pay for that bridge you drive across every day, I don't need that bridge'. The answer is because a developed society benefits from identifying its needs as a whole: you benefit from my taxes paying for the bridge you cross each day, I benefit from you paying taxes that provide my children's education, you benefit from that education when you need a surgeon, I benefit from that surgery when you are well enough to fix my car and so on.
We should care because there will always be women who don't want to return to work, who want to stay home with their children; to be a caring society, we should collectively enable that to happen. This means that there may always be proportionately fewer women with children remaining in careers than men with children remaining in careers. To be a representative society, we should collectively ensure that those women who wish to remain in full time work are empowered to do so.
We should care because this is the 21 Century, and we can choose what kind of society we want to live in.
This Girl Can.
Or ... my advice to mothers returning to work after maternity leave.
It's going to be unimaginably tough. Strength does not come from an easy life, it comes from struggles. Be resilient.
Just as you made assumptions about new mothers who came before you, people will make assumptions about you. Develop a thick skin. Be resilient.
Everything is a phase. This is true for all the good and bad about having children; this particular hardship will pass. Be resilient.
The higher up the ladder you climb, the easier childcare becomes. It becomes more affordable, but more importantly you'll have more control over your own calendar, you decide for yourself when, where and how to do things. In fact, it was my boss, a working mother, who taught me this. I was a head of department, I was exhausted. I was thinking of going back to just classroom teaching. She smiled wisely and said 'That is an option, but if you push through to senior leadership, it gets easier again on the other side'. She was wise in so many ways, the world of education would have suffered a terrible loss if she had 'gone part time' years before. As a headteacher looking after my two young children was massively simpler than when I was a middle manager; I didn't ask anyone if could have permission to go to my children's school play, I just added it into my calendar. Instead of going part time, think about going for that promotion: although you definitely won't work fewer hours, you may have more control over your hours that way.
Instead of 'going part time' maybe start your own business. The world of start-ups is heaving with working mothers like me. The odious word 'mumpreneur' is a testament to this; there's a reason all those mothers out there decided to work for themselves, and it wasn't 'baby brain'. Choose your own hours, write your own calendar. I started a business designing and printing t-shirts for mighty girls - what will you do?
When your children are older, and everything is easier, look out for the younger women coming up behind you who will themselves have to decide whether to push through or 'go part time'. Here's a great article to show you how 'Ten top tips for retaining women post maternity leave': click here
Super Hero Girl Sophie T-Shirt
And finally ... watch this. Michael McIntyre's 'People without children think they know'. It will either make you laugh or cry!
So, what have you been up to since Christmas? I've been working on some new designs, focusing on Science and Maths themes, as well as Superheroes. Come and have a look at what's new.
If you enjoyed this blog, why not have a look at my earlier ones? Here they are:
Pitfalls of working from home as a business owner career mum
A Sizeable Debate - why girls' sizing makes me mad
What About The Boys? - why I only design for girls
Loneliness: There's no getting around it, I spend an awful lot more time alone than I am used to.
]]>Things I love about working from home, in no particular order
1. Being my own boss
2. Being productive, making physical things
3. Looking out over the Moray Firth whenever I peek out of a window
4. Walking the dog in the morning
5. Doing the school run instead of wrap-around care collection
I have no regrets about my decision to change career and work from home. Not one. None. But that doesn't mean life's a bed of roses ... well maybe it is, but with thorns included.
Today's blog is about some of those thorns.
Pitfalls of working from home as a Business Owner Career Mum
1. Loneliness
There's no getting around it, I spend an awful lot more time alone than I am used to. As a Head of a Secondary School my office was never empty, in fact I shared it with the Head of Primary, the Head of Music, and Head's PA! Aside from the office share, there were always folk popping in and out to ask for help with this, guidance on that, teenagers with problems, it was a glorious hub of activity, and that was something I loved.
It couldn't be more different now, something exacerbated by the fact that we moved countries (Austria to Scotland) when I left teaching, so I started from nothing socially speaking. I'm naturally sociable, so I walk across the fields most days with my neighbour and our dogs, I have a semi-regular coffee meet up with a couple of other mums, another friend who has a new baby who pops in about once a month, but fundamentally I spend most of every day alone. Like now - there's just me, the dog, the cat and the clicking of my keyboard. I am often alone, and sometimes lonely.
Over time this takes its toll. I feel guilty if I use a day to have social interaction when I feel I should be putting in the hours to make my business profitable, but in reality it's necessary for my mental health; I'm too much of a social bee to survive without company.
2. Sharing the load
There's no one else to pass anything off to! I had become rather comfortable in my previous position being able to delegate tasks to other people according to their strengths and frankly, my preferences: problems downloading an app - pass it to IT, no time to organise snacks for a meeting - pass it to the librarian, bored with writing a newsletter - assign it to the MYP Coordinator. Most of the smaller, peripheral jobs I could assign away, allowing me to focus on the core tasks, things that only I could do. Oh how times have changed ...
Now the burden of being self employed is most heavy in the little tasks. Problems with my PayPal account - unlucky, sit on the phone for hours talking to the PayPal dude, no time to wait in the Post Office Christmas queues - unlucky, find time or lose sales, bored with advertising - unlucky, get out leafleting on a frozen Sunday morning.
There are so many things I don't know how to do, things I've had oversight for in previous jobs, but not actually done myself - accounting, marketing, social media, photography, website writing, blogging ...
Just once, I'd like someone to say 'I'll do that for you' ... anyone?
Lack of esteem, appreciation and glory!
Stick with me here, I don't think I'm a megalomaniac. My previous life was utterly people centred, and I was responsible for lots of highly visible events; I was pretty good at it too! I was accustomed to people approaching me with congratulations and thanks after presentations, shows, parent events etc. You might think no one thanks teachers, but that's not true. I regularly had students and parents thanking me, bringing gifts, teachers thanking me for my support, or my ideas or my faith in them. Often the things I was praised or thanked for, were very much the work of the people who worked for me, things I had oversight for, but didn't actually graft for myself. All gone.
Here's something I'm really proud of, this design. I really love it, it took me an awfully long time to perfect, and I think it's pretty much perfect ...
It says 'we are who we've been waiting for'. I love that the characters look like girls dressed up as super heroes rather than actual super heroes (actual super heroes - LOL!). I love the writing, it took a while to find the right words. I love the colour of the t-shirt, it took considerable effort to get this lime green from my supplier. I love the hair of each girl, I spent time and care finding the right style and learning to draw the right hair style for the ethnicity of each girl. I love the diversity of the girls, that it can be worn by any girl and she can see herself as one of them. I love the colours of the design, they look great on any background. I love this photo - we had several attempts at getting it right. It took me longer to research, draw and print this t-shirt than any of the events I've organised in the past.
Despite this, I haven't sold any yet, not one (sigh, double sigh).
In this job, my work is appreciated through the medium of sales. If someone loves my work enough to part with their hard earned cash, this is my glory, it is my thanks and my sense of worth. Esteem, appreciation and glory were much more easily won in my last job!
Disposable income
There's no way round it, the times of plenty are way in the past, and way in the future. When you start a new business, the bills don't go away. Children still need swimming lessons, they still need food to eat, they still need Christmas presents. The Council Tax, heating bills, water bills they stay the same, they don't wait for your business to be in profit.
The worry of it is hard too. I have no need for expensive clothes, for going out on the town, indulgent holidays, these things can all wait. In fact, my stress levels are so much lower in this new life, I don't mind if they never return. But the worry of it is hard. What if the business fails? What if I never make enough to live on? What if one month we can't pay the bills? What if we end up with nowhere to live? What if I have to go back to teaching to pay the bills, but without the years of savings behind me? What if I can't afford to retire ever?
I'm not much of a worrier by nature, but occasionally, these things keep me awake at night.
Wasted skills
There are things I've done for years, things I've worked hard learning to do in the past that are no longer part of my life. I miss some of them.
Public speaking. It was a regular part of my life: assemblies for kids, presentations for parents, speeches at graduations, presentations at formal functions. I found it exhilarating, and it definitely didn't make me nervous. I'm a bit sad that the skill is wasted. It's a useful skill, and has served me well over the years. As my business grows, this might come back into play again, maybe I'll give the odd eulogy at a funeral, but essentially this skill is on the back burner for the foreseeable!
I don't teach anymore. I don't miss teaching to be brutally honest; I do miss talking things over with teenagers though. It's a fine line to tread a meaningful conversation with a teenager - treating them as both an adult and a child at the same time, steering the conversation without lecturing, sharing important truths without damaging their self worth. I spent a long time learning to do it, but I doubt my own children will ever consider my guidance as sage as the teenagers I taught!
Thorns aside
Thorns aside, take a look at my current best seller:
The irony of this design is that I never meant to sell it. My daughter asked me for a Dr Who costume in honour of the 13th Doctor's arrival, but I couldn't find one anywhere on line. There were cosplay outfits for adults, but nothing for children. I think the BBC neglected to anticipate that little girls would want to dress up as their idol. So, I quickly drew this t-shirt, which is definitely not an exact replica of the good doctor's, ordered some yellow braces, and ta-da! This t-shirt is currently keeping the wolf from the door - long live the 13th Doctor!
Safe to say, the length of time I spend on a design, has absolutely no correlation to its popularity.
If you think of a mighty girls design that you think would look good on a t-shirt, drop me an email on emma@scarfmonkey.com, I keep an ongoing list of things to draw.
A Sizeable Debate!
Girls and women's sizing makes me mad. Fire hopping mad. Let me start with the little girls ...
Pre-pubescent girls
My daughter is 9. She's small. Not small enough to turn heads, but small enough to regularly compete for the title of smallest in her class - even though she's the second oldest. She's always been petite, which for those of you who know me, will understand is not exactly what I was expecting in my children! When we lived in Vietnam, even in a class entirely full of generally petite Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese children, she was still the smallest, and by small I mean both short and skinny! Here she is as Maisy the mouse:
So what?
Well, if she's amongst the smallest, why can't I buy her clothes for a 9 year old? Before she was even 9 we started buying clothes for 10+, only this week I bought some crop tops from Tesco labelled age 12-13. Theoretically they should fit an average 13 year old. They fit her perfectly. If my tiny 9 year old fits them, where are the 12 and 13 year olds that fit them? Can anyone find me a 13 year old girl that fits 12-13 girls' clothes? Anyone?
So what? Well, two things:
Firstly, there is a cost, children's clothes increase in price with size, but more than that, at age 14 clothes (in the UK) stop being VAT free. If she's wearing age 13 now, then will she be wearing age 14 next year - will I be paying VAT for my 10 year old? If I will be paying VAT in a year, what about the parents whose 9 year old are average size, or heaven forbid - tall! Are they already wearing age 14, already paying VAT?
Secondly, in a society obsessed by size and weight, we are teaching our girls that they are too big, when they don't fit something labelled with their age, it makes them feel fat, it makes them feel the wrong shape. I think it's damaging.
What about the boys?
It's just not the same for boys clothes. My son is both TALLER and much BROADER than his older sister. He's 8. He's very much amongst the tallest in his class, there are a couple of kids his size and bigger, out of a class of 30. He wears age 10-11 clothes, which I would expect - he's above average size. Let's be clear, boys aren't bigger than girls. That's a myth. And when they get to about 10, 11, 12, the girls are bigger, a lot bigger. To show that boys clothes are accurately sized: his friend's parent bought him a t-shirt for his 8th birthday party, the parent bought him age 8 - because they absolutely expected an 8 year old boy to fit age 8. A parent of a girl simply wouldn't make that assumption.
Unisex
Whenever boys and girls clothes are unisex, the sizes are bigger - no, scratch that - they are the boys' sizes. So, let's be clear, unisex means boys: boys' shapes, boys' designs, boys' sizes. For example, in school jumpers (unisex), my son wears age 11-12, he likes baggy, my daughter wears age 7-8, because they are unisex, and she is the size of an average 7 or 8 year old. When I print her a Scarf Monkey t-shirt, I print age 9-11, which is borderline, we are moving into age 12-13. The t-shirts are girls - it says so on the label. When I print her a Scarf Monkey jumper, I print age 7-8. The jumpers are sold as unisex.
Here's my 9 year old in a unisex age 7-8 Scarf Monkey jumper:
The photo below shows the difference between girls' and unisex sizes. Both t-shirts are Fruit of the Loom, children's Sofspun. The one behind is unisex, the one in front is girls. Both are age 9-11:
If you want evidence that girls are not smaller than boys at this age, just look at your old Primary School class photo, or your child's now.
Here's another comparison for you. The t-shirt behind is unisex age 12-13, the t-shirt in front is girls 14-15! Remember how much bigger 15 year old girls are than 13 year old boys:
I know, one could argue that it's in the 'fit', that girls' and women's clothes are more fitted. True. To understand how much the difference in size is, you need to understand that children's clothes typically increase in width by 2 cm only per size, that's 1cm per arm pit! Look at the Scarf Monkey size guide:
The image above (the unisex age 12-13 underneath the girls 14-15) shows a size difference of about 5cm between the two t-shirts. So the girls age 14-15, is two and a half size smaller than the unisex age 12-13. See in this close up:
On to the ladies
I sell quite a lot of ladies' t-shirts, mostly to teenage girls. Because my customers are mostly teenagers, I use very 'young' style t-shirts. They are pretty fitted, and have a high neck with small capped sleeves. They are more fitted than the girls' version, even though ostensibly they are the same make - Fruit of the Loom Sofspun.
These ladies' t-shirts, make the girls' t-shirts look as if they were made for giants' children. And they come labelled with my least favourite type of label: small, medium and large. Only, the 'large' comes up as a UK size 12-14, (US 8-10), even then I've had people who are a UK 12 say this is too tight if you want a looser fit, or if you have breasts.
Girls don't need to buy anything that says 'large' ever. I print t-shirts for my daughter's theatre group, their latest order was for 'student helpers' and three girls chose XL from the sample sizes. These girls all dance, they all wear a leotard on stage and look great. Not one of them is extra large. I hated handing them over knowing how they would have tried to hide from one another their size choices. If you've ever wondered why teenage girls squeeze themselves into clothes that are too tight - I reckon there's a good chance someone else was with them seeing which size they picked up, or asking them 'what size do you need?' in the middle of a shop floor.
The problem with small, medium and large, is there aren't enough sizes, so you start with XS, then go up S, M (there's only one medium and IT'S NOT THE MIDDLE SIZE), then L, XL, XXL. XXL is UK 16-18 (US 12-14)! I mean, 16-18 is definitely not skinny, but is it EXTRA EXTRA large?
Large is a judgement. For teenage girls, it's a mean word. Large compared to what? Compared to normal, that's what. When you give a girl a 'large' you tell her she is larger than normal, imagine the misery of the 'extra large' girls!
What can I do at Scarf Monkey?
Right now, not much. I can't very well advertise an age 9-11 t-shirt and then send one labelled age 12-13 years in its place.
In the future, when Scarf Monkey is bigger and stronger, I will use all my own labels and replace the ones they come with (this is what the big brands do). Perhaps I'll create my own sizing system - use the alphabet and start with a size M for whichever size is in the middle, then go up and down the alphabet. Then there would be no judgement, a K would be two sizes smaller than an M, an O two sizes bigger.
Would this put you off? Are we too used to the system we all know to change it?
I think I'll try anyway.
My business is in the business of empowering girls, making them confident that they can walk with their heads held high, swagger their way through any job interview and fight to break whichever glass ceiling they encounter. I have big ambitions for Scarf Monkey. I plan to change the way girls see themselves. It's why I think the problem with girls' sizing matters, I think our system makes them feel they aren't good enough from a very young age, makes them feel they are too big and take up too much room. I want to tell them they are good enough, they are strong enough, they are smart enough.
Tiny steps. Tiny steps. Every one towards the goal!
Christmas!
By the way, how is your Christmas shopping going? I'm an early shopper, so I'm nearly done - yay! We have some empowering Christmas jumpers for Christmas Jumper Day 2018 on 14 December. This one is flying off the shelves, it's definitely the one the girls are loving the most ... are you Christmas jumper ready?
Follow Your Own Star Christmas Jumper
... though to be honest, I like this one the best, it comes with added sass!
Hey ... Rudolph! Only female reindeer keep their antler's in winter!
This one is a favourite of the littleuns; they love looking through the reindeer and working out which ones are girls and which are boys (the girls all have antlers!):
Happy shopping, and thanks for listening.
Emma
What about the boys?
This is definitely the question I get asked the most: 'Lots of your designs would work on boys' t-shirts, why don't you do boys t-shirts too?'.
It's a good question, especially as I have a deliciously beautiful boy.
In truth, there are many answers, some more straight forward than others. These are all my answers, they definitely and unashamedly contradict each other:
One
Because I make t-shirts for girls. Lots of companies only make things for girls or for boys. Burton's is a men's clothes shop, Claire's Accessories is for little girls. We don't ask Lamborghini why they don't make tractors. To be brutally honest, I don't have much time for the whataboutists, believe it or not there are folk who choose to get offended that I don't make boys t-shirts 'boys would like these designs too' they protest. It's not logical or useful to say that because I choose to seek a particular gap in the market, that I am also responsible for all other market gaps. I don't make boys t-shirts because I make girls t-shirts, the way webuyanycar.com don't make cars because they buy used cars. That's my grumpiest answer!
Two
Because I don't have the space. I work from home, my workroom is the size of an average bedroom. It's mostly filled with shelves and boxes full of blank girls t-shirts. To fit boys t-shirts in, I'd have to reduce the range of colours I offer girls. I'd love to, but there just isn't room. This is my most practical answer, but possibly the least true. At least, it is true, but I could probably work something out if I wanted to. This is definitely the answer I give when I'm just too tired for the debate!
(dinosaur t-shirt - for girls)
Three
Because it would reduce the value of the girls t-shirts. This is what I find hardest to explain, but I'll try! There aren't many situations where boys would be jealous of girls clothes, but I've heard it the other way around lots of times. Likewise, there aren't many situations where parents wish their son's clothes were more like their daughter's. You hear 'I wish there were more girls clothes with dinosaurs and space', but not so much (though not impossible) 'I wish there were more boys clothes with glitter and unicorns.
I chose girls' t-shirts because although boys' clothes can be super dull (more on that in a minute), girls' clothes often make them 'less than'. The difference is that boys are not disempowered by the images on their clothing, whereas I think girls are. It's not t-shirts that inspire me, it's girls' empowerment, that's where my passion lies.
I was wavering with the idea of adding boys or unisex t-shirts to my website a few months ago, when a friend changed my mind. She's an awesome customer, and comes back again and again for t-shirts for her daughter and as gifts for her daughter's friends. So, as a friend, I offered to print something for her son. She said 'no thanks, it's a nice offer, but I like that it's special for [my daughter]. If I could get them for [my son], they would be less special for her'. I knew immediately she was exactly right. So that's my most honest answer.
Four
I do! I print t-shirts for friends' boys and for my own boy! This is my shortest answer :)
highland cow t-shirt - for girls
Christmas baubles highland cow t-shirt
Five
Maybe I will in the future. I do get frustrated by how boring boys clothes are. Every aisle is a sea of black, navy and grey. Every design is another tired old Star Wars design, or Jurassic Park motif. There's always the latest superhero too. Yawn. Boys are much more varied and interesting than that.
In my head I have some lovely designs for boys and parents who are at peace with every kind of masculinity, not just the traditional one: I can see a thorny vine, twisting around from the back to end in a spiny flower on the front of a deep purple t-shirt. I can see a pencil drawn unicorn, with an elf-boy riding with his hair blowing in the wind on a pale blue t-shirt. I can see a tree in sillouette with the roots underground perfectly mirrored in the bare winter branches above on a vibrant lime green t-shirt.
For now though. I want to get what I'm doing right. That's girls. There's only one me. All in good time.
Just look at those eyelashes!!!
]]>Feeling the love
It's hard to describe how amazing it is to have someone like my designs enough to buy one of my t-shirts. I feel a real responsibility to live up their expectations. When someone ordered a single t-shirt from New Zealand I was amazed. It was simultaneously awesome and a worry ... what if it wasn't exactly what they'd expected? I spent an age on the printing for that one, if someone was paying to send a t-shirt to New Zealand, it was going to be immaculate.
The best thing that happens is when someone sends me a picture. Like this:
I know it's just a t-shirt, but to me, this young girl is a customer wearing my t-shirt that makes her feel powerful, celebrating her strength and place in the world.
Also, they can start so young. This little one is so delicious I could eat her!
Maybe it's foolish to imagine I can make a difference in these girls' lives, in how they see themselves and their place in the world. Maybe.
And I feel passionately that girls don't have to choose between playing princesses and being strong, they can do both and they can do both at the same time, the one doesn't cancel out the other. Here's a customer being regal and oozing with confidence in her Fierce Heart t-shirt.
Representation
I feel in my soul that representation makes a difference in how girls see themselves, so I try to draw girls and women in roles dominated by men. Not because I think women should do them instead of men, but because I want to live in a world where we don't need to have targets about representation. My Space Station collection is aimed at exactly that. All the astronauts are female, not because all astronauts are men (certainly not) but because it's already easy to find clothing for children with male astronauts, I'm just filling a gap. This customer sent me one of my favourite pictures:
Her review said 'Great designs that really sparked my 3 year old's imagination. She's been planning our trip to the moon ever since her T-shirt arrived!'. I couldn't be happier ... a little girl who can picture herself travelling to the moon because of my Blast Off t-shirt. Of course, a t-shirt isn't a constant topic of conversation, you can also wear it to feed the deer!
Not everything is girl power
Not everything I do is girl power, actually most of it isn't. I just shy away from the traditional kittens and unicorns really. I try to use a broad range of colours, not just pink and never cute. This Meerkat Line-Up is seriously popular, it's strange I had no idea when I was drawing it. I was just trying to draw animals that weren't kittens and puppies! I love that these friends have matching t-shirts. I remember wearing matching clothes with my friends ... takes me back! Don't they look lovely? Windswept and confident; looking like the world is waiting for them.
What about the grown ups?
I never really expected to be designing for adults, but I was overwhelmed with requests from mothers saying 'I want one too!'. Sometimes the mothers and daughters have matching t-shirts - then I know they must be cool, because I certainly never wore anything matching with my mum!
These I'm With Her Mother Earth t-shirts are being worn by mother and daughters all the way in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam - though perhaps they might say they were made all the way in Inverness, Scotland?
What's next?
My next step is getting my Christmas t-shirts and jumpers ready ... yes, I know it's August. I've got my designs, I'm busy sampling sweaters and seeing what the prints look like. I'll show you a sneaky peak of my designs next time!
According to a quick google search, 660,000 new companies were registered in the UK in 2017. Wow. Just wow. The harsh reality is that 8/10 will fail within the first year. Starting a start-up is the hardest thing I've ever done.
I finished teaching around this time last year, and now I'm in business with my own limited company, doing something I believe in passionately. It sounds great. Inspiring even? The reality is much much darker. It's hard, demanding, lonely, costly, demoralising, pricey, frustrating ... did I mention expensive?
I'm lucky, I could afford to stop earning for year. But I'm not rich by any means, and now it starts to bite. I'm exactly where I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to do, so why am I not raking in the cash? Well, to be honest, I think that part is just further down the line than anyone realises.
In an effort to remind myself how far I've come, I'd like to tell you how I got here :)
How to design a t-shirt
This how much I knew about t-shirt design before I got started:
That's about it: zip, zero, nada, nothing. I couldn't even have drawn that graphic!
This how much I know about t-shirt design now:
The first thing I had to do, was learn how to draw. How did you know you could draw - I hear you ask? Well, I pretty much feel I can do most things most people can do if I try hard enough (by most I'm excluding extreme sports, astro-physics and a variety of other very specialised things). So I set about learning from scratch. This is where I began, with youtube tutorials. I chose inkscape because 1. it's free 2. I have a general preference for freeware after decades of working in cash-strapped schools!:
Mostly I used (and use) tutorials by an American guy called David Saporito. He has a nice voice, (which as it turns out is surprisingly important) and with practice I can copy what he does at the same speed he speaks. I found him by chance, and I tried and rejected a fair few others on the way. Apparently he also does tutorials on gimp (which is like a free photoshop and allows you to manipulate images, whereas inkscape allows you to draw them), which is where I may head for my next set of tutorials.
This is the very first thing I drew, you'll find her featured on a number of my Creepy Crawlies designs ... a cockroach ... because why not? It took days, and days of painstaking work and rather a lot of frustrated tears ... watching a video, trying it out, coming across a problem, finding a video to solve the problem and on and on:
If I drew it today, it would take about 10 minutes or so. Safe to say I've improved. These days I can draw like this:
Designing is the part I enjoy the most, and I can't imagine running out of ideas. I'm more frustrated by my own inability to make things look the way they do in my head, than by wondering what to draw next.
How to print a t-shirt
It took me until January 2018 to have a collection of t-shirt designs I thought I could sell. The next 6 months would prove much much harder than just learning to draw. On my to do list: 1. register my company, 2. make a website 3. buy a DTG printer 4. learn to use it 5. learn how to market my company. As it turned out, 1,2 and 3 were fairly straight forward, if slow. 4 and 5 a titanic task.
This is me printing a t-shirt
Part 1 - pretreatment
Part 2 - printing
How did I learn? Of course, the answer is obvious - youtube tutorials! Is there anything you can't learn on youtube?
Doesn't it look simple? Relaxing even?
Ha!
I've messed up each and every stage many times over. It can go wrong at any point, my pile of t-shirt 'seconds' is a whole box on the top shelf! I have very high standards, I can't bear to send something that isn't exactly right. It must be perfect.
Testing and Packaging
I spent ages testing the t-shirt and printing in my washing machine, I have one t-shirt that no-one has ever worn, but it goes in the washing machine every single time I do a dark wash. So far so good at least 30 washes later, the print looks great!
Then I went around and around in circles looking at packaging. Being eco-friendly is super important to me, but when I looked at the prices compared with non-eco packaging I admit I wavered. Ultimately, I couldn't imagine sending thousands of plastic bags out into the world to end up in the oceans, so all my packaging is bio-degradable. It was definitely the right decision, I love my mailing bags, and I smile every time I use one! Is that weird?
And finally
So, here I am. Three months in. Open for business. I'm beginning to think this is the hardest part of all. Getting out there. Selling my wares. Selling my ideas. This is hard.
Can you help?
Can you write a review? Buy a t-shirt for a little girl or a tenacious teenager? Share my blog on your page? Tell your friends about me, about my website and my ethos? Honestly, if you share all my posts you'll be really helping! It's a competitive market, and I'm new to this game.
I'm absolutely not going to be one of the 8/10 who fail, I am in this for the hard run, I am absolutely going to make a success of this ... I need you to help me get there!
]]>While the rest of the UK is sweltering in boiling humidity, the Scottish Highlands are a balmy 26°C with a lovely strong breeze. What better time to start Scarf Monkey's blog, to talk about all the ups and downs of starting a new business, and the reasons why it's more than just a business to me, it's a project from the heart.
Where to begin?
Let's start with the pink. While a little pink is lovely, too much is just ... too much. Imagine reading this blog if all the words were pink instead of just a few. When I look through the photos of my 1970s and 1980s childhood, pink doesn't really feature much, if at all. There are green dresses, blue trousers, red blouses, yellow pyjamas and stripey jumpers - some of highly questionable taste for sure - but very little pink. Now, when I look down 'girls aisle' (there's another topic for later), it's a sea of pink, usually pale pink, a bit of white and yellow, the odd pastel blue, but mostly, overwhelmingly, pink. It's limiting.
Then, there are the slogans: 'when I grow up I want to be a unicorn', 'born to be beautiful', 'beach babe', 'princesses have more fun', 'rainbows forever'. I found myself having an internal dialogue - and occasionally accosting another innocent bystander - with, 'when I grow up I want to be an astronaut', and 'born to be an engineer', 'future beach lifeguard', 'sporty girls have more fun', 'smart girls forever'.
An epiphany
The final moment came in Tesco (not many life changing experiences happen in Tesco I suspect) while I was looking through the girls clothes, there in sparkly pink sequins on a pink t-shirt ... 'GOOD AS GOLD'. It might not seem as bad as 'princesses wear pink', but I think it's worse. I think it's dangerous. I think that the clothes we put on our children tell them what we value about them, and although being good has its place, you can bet your very last penny you'll never ever see such a thing on a boys t-shirt. That's why it's dangerous. I knew immediately I could do better. By happenstance I had read a quote of uncertain provenance (possibly Eleanor Roosevelt) the day before: 'well behaved women seldom make history'. Now that would make a better t-shirt, I thought. And then I knew what I would do.
I had wanted to stop teaching for a few years. I loved the kids, there are few things more entertaining than a room full of teenagers, and I challenge anyone to find a job so full of belly laughs. After 22 years though, it was enough, I was becoming jaded, and that wasn't healthy for me or the students. I didn't know what to do instead, so for a while I carried on and pushed the thought of changing careers away. I was pretty successful as a headteacher, and I had never done anything else ... ever.
At the same time, I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the clothes on offer for my daughter. I would go shopping for news tops, skirts, trousers or even socks and come back empty handed time and again. It was just so much the same, pink pink princess, pink pink unicorn, pink pink puke: limiting at best, and limiting at worst.
And so, I decided I would make t-shirts, for girls. How hard could it be? But that's a tale for another day.
I'll write again soon. Meanwhile, have a look at some of my designs ...
you won't find anything saying 'good as gold', but you will find 'well behaved women seldom make history'
See you next time!
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