Babies and animal motifs: a freakish modern convention
3 Comments Published October 02, 2007 at 12:27 PM.Tum te tum. In my toils these past few weeks as baby slave, I couldn't help but notice (comma ponder, comma completely obsess over) the amazing prevalence of animal motifs on infant clothing. On anything surrounding the infant, actually. And I can't stop thinking about how REALLY WEIRD it is, and how long it's been the norm.
Admit it, animals are the LAST thing you want around your baby. Especially lions and alligators, which are given a lot of play in our baby's wardrobe, albeit in cutesy-poo format. It's nonsensical: the human race spent thousands of years building up civilization by hunting species to extinction so that our young could be PROTECTED from the wild.
My wife freaks if she sees a spider on the ceiling, for gods' sake.
If anything, my daughter's sleepers should sport a picture of a decapitated lion next to a lacerated alligator, because given the chance, a lion or alligator would EAT HER, and I think dead predators ought to make her feel warm and safe.
I'm pretty sure I spotted your kid wearing at least 1 dinosaur-spotted ensemble. They're extinct. That should make you happy, especially considering a carnivorous beastie of their magnitudes would be significantly more dangerous than a lion or alligator. Then again, a comet did all your work for you on that one...
On aimlessly rereading this it hit me that this phenomenon, in all likelihood, goes back to the Ark...the one safe place to be while the world was being cataclysmically rearranged. And yes, there were dinosaurs on there...their eventual extinction was brought about by humans, much like any number of species since then.
Jurassic (P)ark, eh? You're quite insane. But I love you anyway.