Dress and Colour as Gender Practices: Non-Binary Identities in Contemporary Children’s Literature

Abstract

This article examines three works of contemporary children’s literature—Not All Princesses Dress in Pink, My Shadow Is Purple, and Mary Wears What She Wants—as narratives that challenge the gender binary through the aesthetic modalities of clothing and colour. Focusing on the visual and stylistic choices assigned to fictional characters, the study explores how dress and chromatic selection operate as semiotic carriers capable of both reproducing and destabilizing socially imposed gender norms. Drawing on theoretical perspectives that conceptualise gender as a performative and non-static process, the analysis demonstrates that these narratives undermine the notion of a “natural” or inherently fixed gender, presenting characters who construct their identities through non-normative practices of self-expression. At the same time, approaches that treat clothing as a socially embodied practice reveal dress as a site in which gender is produced, regulated, or contested through culturally coded choices. Additionally, the historical dimensions of colour preferences and the formation of gendered chromatic conventions are considered, positioning colour not as a neutral aesthetic element but as a mechanism of social categorisation. The article further investigates how concepts of masculinity and femininity intersect with non-binary identity formations, illuminating the dynamic relationship between aesthetics, social practice, and self-definition. Overall, the study shows that the three contemporary picturebooks move beyond mere representations of diversity, activating an aesthetic politics that challenges normative expectations and expands the possibilities through which children can imagine, articulate, and perform their gender identities.