4 hours ago
5
There’s much about becoming a new mother that could be filed under “maddening”. The phrase “sleep when the baby sleeps”. The way people stop asking how you are, instead only asking after the baby. The sheer volume of unsolicited advice – some barbed, some so painfully obvious it’s borderline offensive, and all of it totally inescapable. (I suppose I could try living on a desert island, though no doubt someone would send a plane to skywrite: “They’re probably just hungry!”)
But it was while doing the laundry last week that I found something truly unhinged. I was sorting my infant son’s clothes from mine when I noticed that he had more pockets on his clothes than I did. What exactly does an eight-month-old need with a tiny pocket? Is he supposed to keep something in there? A dummy? Bits of rice cake? All the sleep he’s stolen from me (in which case he’d need a bigger pocket)?
Pockets – or rather the lack of them – in women’s clothes are a well-known grievance. Historically, women weren’t given pockets because they weren’t expected to carry valuables, go anywhere or have autonomy. Later, pockets were rejected for the sake of appearance: they disrupted the line of a dress, their functionality ruining the fantasy of the woman as decoration. Instead, we were given the handbag – oh, great! another object to manage! – and even now, feminist scholars note that women’s pockets are often shallow, symbolic or fake.
I know what you’re thinking: cheer up, it’s cute for a baby to have pockets! And it is. But it’s worth noting that often little girls’ clothes don’t have pockets.
As for maternity wear, these days it’s certainly better than the Victorian era (when corsets were worn to conceal pregnancy, and, by inference, sexuality), even if through most of the 20th century the only design thought given to it appeared to be “make it big”. Then this century came along and the idea of accentuating a baby bump arose, no doubt influenced by the emergence of the celebrity baby bump shoot, while social media urged women to feel empowered – even sexy – about it. Which may be why today, if you want a slinky lace nursing bra, you can have one.
But you can’t have pockets. Which feels especially unfair when early motherhood is a time when your hands are often full (with a human). Actually, if any maternity designers are reading this: don’t stop at two pockets. Let’s go to 10. A wipe-clean shoulder? Day-to-night outfits using poppers like babygrows? Please, help!
Until then – it looks like I’ll be squeezing my AirPods into my son’s dungarees.
Coco Khan is a freelance writer and co-host of the politics podcast Pod Save the U
