Those MLP shirts are so cute!
What if I don’t want my shorts baggy, just long enough to come down to my fingertips? Or if I have to go up 3 sizes or more to get that length? Or if I already have to wear a belt because the apparently-mandatory lycra in women’s jeans stretches out during the day so that fresh out of the dryer I have borderline camel toe and by evening I can take my pants off without unfastening them? Or if I already have to wear a belt because the only pants I can find that fit my booty gap terribly at the waist. What then?
I think that ultimately, the problem isn’t how short the girls’ shorts for sale are. Shorts that short were common enough when I was a child, and nobody thought anything of it. The thing is, though, that we all wore them, boys and girls, men and women. Shorts were super-short on everyone, then medium length on everyone, then long on everyone. The was some sexual dimorphism in styling, but the length and cut were fairly uniform. Then, somewhere along in the 90’s, the hemlines and cuts diverged wildly. You show a modern young man a picture of basketball players from the 70’s, wearing shorts that fit the same as women’s shorts do now, and you hear comments about how horrifically short and tight the shorts are. At the same time, if you suggest that young women wear shorts that come to their knuckles, you’re going to hear accusations of slut-shaming. The children’s clothing in stores is just an extension of this weird double-standard we’ve developed about bodies and modesty.
And it really is weird, you know, this idea that men’s bodies should be totally covered but women’s should be exposed. The most common comment I hear from guys about shorter shorts for men is that “nobody wants to see guys’ gross hairy legs,” and it’s pretty fucked-up that we teach men and boys their bodies are gross, or that they feel like they have to espouse the notion the male body is gross to make sure nobody thinks they’re gay, or whatever the hell is up with that. It’s also pretty fucked-up that we teach women and girls that exposing their bodies is not a sexual act, but at the same time not exposing them is a signal of shame and sex-negativity.
Hell, it even applies to their toys. How can you identify the girls’ aisle of a toy store? It’s the one where everything’s pink, purple, or pinkish purple.
Crazy.
My god, yes. I had to buy some clothing for a 2 year old girl recently and that was my number one criteria, “not fucking pink.”
It doesn’t stop with the kids anymore, either. The store I work at “caters” to women hunters by stocking pink camo. Went to Cabela’s recently to pick up stuff for our pellet gun, were browsing the shotguns, and the salesdude asked if I wanted one of the pink guns. WTF? I don’t need a pink firearm arm to validate my femininity. Color is probably the LAST feature that concerns me in a weapon. (I actually usually look at the “youth” weapons, the ones for male teens, because I’m on the small size and their stocks usually are a better fit.)
Somehow the pink plague hasn’t spread to the crossbows, yet. Thank Og. At least not in my area.
I don’t understand.How baggy some jeans or jean shorts is determine by size.So if you hate the size you have it is too tight than get one in other size .
If it is too baggy and falling off.Get a size lower than that but bigger than the size you complaining is too tight.
In case you didn’t realize it, most (not all) off the rack clothing for females is made for a mean height, not necessarily proportionate. IOW, the jeans that are two sizes too big for your four year old aren’t necessarily longer, just bigger in the waist and hips to accommodate the chunky kids. Buying bigger sizes does little to nothing to aleviate the inseam issues.
So you saying baggy at the top around the waist but tight around the legs.Why would they do that? Do they think girls have skinny legs.
Some manufacturers seem to think that, yes, or at least that we all want our jeans to be skin-tight in the leg. Many of them also seem to think our butts/hips are approximately 2" bigger around than our waists, and that we all want our asses Bedazzled, and that fat women want their shorts knuckle-length or shorter, and that we seldom have breasts bigger than a B cup, and a whole host of other things that leave us scratching our heads and wondering “Why would they do that?”
Also, inseam is the length of the pant leg, from crotch to hem. The lady in the blog post was looking for an equivalent inseam for her daughter, something that would cover as much of her leg as it would if she bought boys’ shorts. She had to go up three sizes to get the same length, which would make the waist so huge on the kid she’d look like one of those diet plan commercials where people hold their “fat” clothes away from them like a circus tent.
So you saying the manufacturers think girls want shorts that are short and manufacturers think guys want shorts that are longer shorts almost to the knee.
That girls want to show of skin and guys want to cover skin.
And going up other size or more does not help all you get is beggy by the waist.
The oversexualization of media of big boobs showing through clothes and big booty.
That if they make clothes baggy in this area it will cover it.
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! 
Part of the discrepancy results from the fact that, from the time they’re out of diapers, young males in particular wear shants or manpris instead of shorts. IOW it’s not only that clothing for females has gotten scantier, but also that the males’ has gotten longer/bigger.
While this topic usually comes up in reference to what adults wear, it’s definitely extends down to children too. I think an additional factor for very young boys is that they want to emulate their older brothers and dads; I don’t know if this applies in a similar way to young girls and their female elders.
Don’t forget some countries are worse than the US when it comes to this.
I think there’s an even deeper premise underlying all that. From about 1990 onwards, concurrently with the changes in fashion you describe, the focus became very much more how we (male and female) look to others, rather than what was comfortable on ourselves, particularly in situations where nobody used to care. The beach for instance: absent fashion pressure, why would any guy want to wear long and baggy trunks? Understood, not every male looks particularly good in a pair of trunks that hits at upper thigh, never mind a speedo, but if there’s ever a time when people should be able to dress for themselves, it’s any summer day near any body of water, be it man made or artificial.
I went to college in San Diego, where it was obviously very warm all year round. Shorts were very much the thing to wear, and quite a few people, including guys, would wear running shorts to class, and just in general while out for the day. I was too shy for that, myself, but nobody much cared one way or another about those guys who did.
I’m not going to speak to the male side, but I don’t remember a time between the '70s and now when the focus for women or girls was on what was comfortable rather than on what looked good. It’s just that different things (some more comfortable than others) were thought to look good at different times. Those gym shorts that were popular in the 70s and 80s? People didn’t wear them because they were comfortable- even people who found them to be uncomfortable wore them because they were in style along with the knee-high tube socks with stripes around the top.
There have always been individual people who care more about comfort than looking good to others, but that’s a different issue.
I think most kids of either gender tend towards styles they see everyone in their gender wearing.
Fashion does tend to work that way.
When my first was born in 1999 that unisex stuff was on the way out at Babies R Us. The pinks and blues had returned except for one small section of unisex - browns and yellows. Legos came out in pink and the sets were around dollhouses. Not tanks and airplanes like for the boys.
But then I know tons of little girls who love the whole princess thing. Go to disney and look how many little girls sign up for the Princess party. My son was once asked to come to the neighbor girls princess party (as a prince).
You see that in other sports too. Hockey is coed but the girls wear pink helmets. Same with youth baseball the helmets for girls, you know them because they have a hole in the back for a pony tail, are pink.