Shifting gears to the next project! I just submitted my abstract to the 2015 Popular Culture Association conference. When the semester dies down a bit, I will post more of a preview. Stay tuned!

The TV series "The Golden Girls" has enjoyed enormous popularity since its debut in 1985. Part of its success is due to the memorable characters: housemates Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia. In this presentation, I examine each woman as an archetype of mature fashion. The Golden Girls costume represent a moment of cultural translation when beliefs and stereotypes about older women were realized in a visual form that has been disseminated through years of syndication. What do their costumes suggest about the range of "age-appropriate " style for older women? What are the geneaologies of of each look, such as Sophia's "old lady" house dresses or Blanche's sexy date night wardrobe? How are these typologies related to similar categories for younger women, as seen in quizzes from Seventeen and Cosmopolitan?

Quartz has a neat article on the origin of those ubiquitous pink and blue striped blankets for newborns. Note that when the blankets were introduced, the pink and blue combination was considered suitable for all babies. This is consistent with my research on the 1950s. It was the most popular color scheme for birth announcements and baby cards, in addition to being a common feature of newborn clothing. Imagine the outcome if they had been developed in the 1990s!

No book is perfect, and I am more aware than anyone of what was left out of "Pink and Blue". It was -- and is -- my fervent wish that it never be considered the last word on the gendering of children's clothing. There is so much we still don't know, beginning with the experiences of children who were not white and middle class.

That's why I was unspeakably excited to see Katie Knowles' dissertation "Fashioning Slavery: Slaves and Clothing in the U.S. South, 1830-1865" show up in my citation alerts. Knowles proves convincingly that enslaved boys were kept in shirttails well past the age at which middle class white boys were breeched, or put into short pants.

This practice persisted disturbingly in the habit -- remembered from my childhood -- of referring to even elderly Black men as "boy". Her dissertation is available online in PDF format, and I recommend it highly for anyone interested in the intersection of race and gender in the study of dress.

My one question for Dr. Knowles:

When can I order the book?