Department Stores don't think boys wear clothes? (mild & weak)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My son’s 5th grade graduation ceremony is next Friday, so I go out today to get the child a new pair of dress pants and a nice shirt. I figure he will probably need shoes too, since he is growing like an adolescent weed. It’s not a huge deal, but I want him to look nice.

So, off to the dreaded Mall we go. We wade through the sea of girls fashions and accessories at Belk’s, JC Penny, and Macy’s to try to find the boys department, all 20 square feet of it. These stores average about 4 racks of boys clothes, all hideously ugly or out of season, no dress clothes. As for shoes, well, he wears a 6 1/2. I am told that they never order that size… nobody wears it. “He just needs to grow some,” I am told by a well-meaning salesgirl. I am growing exasperated. Shopping is NOT my favorite thing. At a shoe store, we do find two pairs that are 6 1/2, and thankfully one of them is acceptable. I try The Gap, thinking we’ll just settle for a nice pair of khaki’s…and wouldn’t you know it? The store did away with away with their boys section just a few weeks ago! AGH! I am told by the salesperson that they only carry Women’s, Men’s, and girls now. What the heck??? How can you just ignore one whole demographic??

We leave the Mall and go to Target, who is not much better. I do find a pair of men’s 28 khaki’s that are really too big but will be OK with a belt, and a men’s small shirt that is actually pretty nice. Of course the pants are way too long, I’ll have to cut them off and hem them, which I really don’t mind, but dayum…

All freaking day schlogging around trying to buy clothes to fit an adolescent boy? I was thinking we’d be home in 2 hours, it took about 6, and the boy, for once, wasn’t giving me a hard time and griping constantly about when we were going home. He withstood the process and took most of it in stride.

Unlike his mother.

Why is it that the girls department is literally about 5 times that of the boys department? I know, I know, I am pretty much a girly girl myself, but it truly does seem that ALLLLLLL the marketing and floor space goes towards female gee-gaws. The boy’s section is haphazard at best, and there is never anyone to help you, of course. Stores devote more space to pocketbooks for 13-year-old girls than they they give to the entire boys section. It’s ridiculous.

As I made my way through store after store, I got more and more pissed off about it!

Dammit! Boys wear clothes, too! I realize adolescent boys are not major clothing consumers and that most of them are happy with a few ratty tee shirts, cargo shorts, and flip flops most of the time, but when you need clothes for them, you NEED them! It’s not so much an issue with shorts and tees, but dress shoes and pants are next to impossible to find! I am concluding that buyers for these clothing stores have never tried to clothe a 12 year-old boy in dressy casual clothes. Catalog shopping is NOT an option at this age, the clothes have to tried on. Where have all the boy’s clothes gone?? Are they just supposed to go naked? I know I can’r be alone in this.

I have a headache.

I guess that little salesgirl was right. He’s just going to have to grow before we go shopping again.

2

I feel your pain. I have found Mervyns to be a big help though. Do they have one of those in your area? The Mervyns out here has a respectable sized boys section and I found a really nice suit there for my son as well.

3

I have the same problem. At least I solved the shoe problem for athletic shoes, we just get women’s until they grow past the 6.5’s. For dress shoes we have had to settle for black, all leather athletic shoes.

4

It’s so funny to read this thread. I just came home buying my female toddler a pair boys’ pajamas. Every single pair of girls’ pajamas had ballet slippers, hearts, purses, and girly geegaws, in pink. ValleyGirl went right over to the boys’ pajamas and said, “Ba! Ba!” while pointing at all the balls decorating them. Well, I’m not going to argue over pajamas, so “ba” jammies it is!

Obviously, my complaint can’t hold a candle to yours, but all I have to say is that the biggest section doesn’t really matter if it’s all boring pink crap!

By the way, Old Navy has a pretty big boys’ section.

5

Bart: …because Mom, people who wear these clothes GET BEATEN UP!!!
Marge: Then they’re not your friends…

6

Shopping for infant boys can be just as frustating. 20 racks of frilly girl stuff to one rack of boy clothes.

7

Thanks for the response, ya’ll! I am glad I am not alone in this frustration.

Taters, I have to say no, there isn’t a Mervyn’s here. There’s one in Augusta and Atlanta, though. Of course when I have occasion to go there, he doesn’t need any clothes, and there’s no way to predict when he will be wearing what size. Thanks, though!

SP2263, you are not the first person to tell me about the women’s tennis shoe trick, but my son would rather die than wear a women’s shoe, and yeah, I tried to fool him… nothin’ doin’! LOL!

Lily, I’m afriad you have alot of pink in your future! The girl aisle at ToysRus is so blindly Pepto Bismol pink that we sheild our eyes and run through it on our way to the trucks and Legos. I also have friends with girls who buy the plain boy’s tee shirts from the Gap for their daughters. Someone could certainly do a partner thread to this one called, “Department Stores don’t think girls wear anything but pink?” Old Navy is a place I usually do shop for my boys, and for everyday clothes they are great, but they don’t have anything dressy. Dress pants and dress shoes are my main dilemma.

TheLoadedDog, yes, I am up against that “cool” factor. We just went through a thing with him not understanding why he can’t wear his baseball cap all cocked over to one side:
#1 - the rednecks around here will beat you up
#2 - the gangs around here use certain hat positions as signals and will beat you up
#3 - no, it doesn’t look cool, you are a skinny little white kid and it looks stupid
#4 - because I said so
It makes me understand why some parents opt for schools with uniforms so nobody rags on anybody else about their clothes.

8

ShadiRoxan, been there, done that! And the one rack is ugly stuff, right? haha!! My boys are 9 & 11 now, but when they were infants, Baby Gap had the best stuff for infant boys. No hideous appliques of airplanes and alligators or stupid sayings, just nice plain cotton pieces that held up well to repeated washings. Went through two boys, then got handed down to cousins. It only gets worse as they get older.

9

I refuse to put my son in anything that has balls on it. I’ll put him in frogs, lizards, dinosaurs, firetrucks. Things like that. My favorite has become overalls with either stripes or plain onesies. I think my son has at least 4 pairs of overalls.

My favorite place to shop has become eBay.

10

I feel your pain.

My son grew 6 inches in as many months. He is now 13 and 5’10 with a 28 inche waist and size 12 shoes.

He is not a hip hop kind of person (more a computer geek who plays soccer).

He is not a skateboarder.

He is not a surfer.

He is not into gangsta rap or it’s “clothing”.

Target has NOTHING for boys his size and age.

Kohl’s is not much better.

Aeropostale has some nice stuff, which he will not even try because his sister shops there. :rolleyes:

Old Navy is about it, sadly.
If you think everyday stuff is hard–try finding a leather belt for a 6 y/o boy…maybe department stores think that boys run around nekkid?

11

Target has nothing? Does your local one have a ‘screened tees’ wall in the men’s section? At 5’10", he should find at least one that he likes.

12

There’s no money in boys’ clothes. Boys can get by on four pairs of jeans and five shirts (plus tighty-whities and socks, of course). You only need to replace those once or twice a year.

Girls, now! With the current (and way-too-long-lasting) “princess” trend, girls’ clothing is big money. If the manufacturers can spin the ads right, they can have girls wearing three outfits a day and six on Saturday and Sunday. A plain skirt will never do! This one has red fringe, that one has yellow fringe, and that one over there with the blue fringe goes perfectly with my Dora the Explorer bag! There’s three pieces of clothing which will probably be worn in one day (as the girl changes her matching accessories) that parents just HAVE to buy, compared with a pair of jeans for boys, which will be worn for two days, eating up a little less than 1/3 of the week.

The stores know which side their bread’s buttered on.

13

Anybody who isn’t driven to frustration, fury or angst by shopping probably hasn’t shopped lately–or inexplicably relishes the challenge. Retail therapy addicts must be masochists or ‘Differently Wired’, as PC fans probably never put it. Dunno.

Preach it…but this isn’t really Pit material. Your thread yearns to breathe free and roam among MPSIMS, so I’ll move it over there for you.

TVeblen
Pit mod

14

Me and my grandmother have gotten together to shop for me a few times when I visit (we both like to shop.) So let me just say that when you refuse to wear (limitting the conversation to pants):

Anything khaki colored (tans and off-whites)
Anything with a stripe down the outer seam
Pockets or seams in places that serve no purpose
Earth tones
Bellbottomed
Oversized
Pre-worn or otherwise made ragged previous to getting to you
Blue Jeans

And you’re a 30 waste with 34 legs…life quite sucks. She now refuses to accept any requests from me for clothing for Christmas or birthday. We could go through three malls and find all of one pair of pants that was slightly too short.

But indeed, if I was female–life would be quite cheery (except I would look fowl in a skirt of course.)

15

Chicken legs, huh?

16

Well, just simply I wouldn’t be a good looking woman.

*I likes me legs… shucks :frowning: *

17

Heh…

whoosh

“Fowl” / “chicken” :smiley:

18

:smack:

oops, lol

19

I am SO with you on this. I don’t have much to choose from when it comes to children’s clothing stores. It’s Wal-Mart, Moore’s (a small clothing and housewares store), and Goodwill. I have become convinced that Wal-Mart thinks we want to take our boys to church in jeans or cargo pants and tennis shoes. And we get crap in the way of girls’ dress clothes as well, unless it’s Christmas or Easter. (Heck, it’s only recently that our local WM quit believing that no one in this town ever got pregnant, and they finally ponied up the maternity clothes. Too late for ME, though.)

Moore’s is better, but it’s more expensive. And you’d still play hell getting a pair of dress shoes that don’t have square toes or alligator-hide patterns. shudder

Goodwill–actually, you can find some decent stuff in there if you’re willing to paw through the racks upon racks of clothes. I will say that our store is pretty well organized and since there are people with $$$ in this town, some of the secondhand stuff is in very nice shape. But the clothes aren’t sorted by size and tags have been removed (“the tag is scratchy, Mom!”) so you have to have patience and time. With a five year old and a three year old, I have these things in very short supply! :slight_smile:

20

I really feel for you. I am probably one of the only women in the world who detests shopping for clothing, and have ever since I was very young. Probably because my mother would insist on going into EVERY damn store and looking at every single rack of clothing to get me a single pair of jeans…

Although as a reaction to it, I ended up being an excellent personal shopper. My mother back in the 60s/very early 70s basically shopped at Berghdorf’s and Macy’s 2 times a year, and at one point in time I picked out her wardrobe for her for about 4 years. I know her taste in clothes, what colors looked good on her, and went in and picked out what I knew would look good on her, handed then to the rather ineffectual shopgirl to pass into her dressing room.

I have 3 pair of shoes, and could probably pack everything I wear into a classic steamer trunk ‘wardrobe’ [you know, one side of hanging clothes, one side of drawers.] with a smaller ‘makeup case’[one of those funky squarish small suitcases that is like a small box] for my toiletries and the miniscule amount of jewelry I own.

Of course mrAru and I have 5000 or so books, so packing light for a move is a bit out of the question. :frowning: