cultural translation thought

So a hundred years ago little boys wore pink ("light red" -- the word "pink" usually meant a particular range of light red colors at the time) and little girls wore baby blue.  Though colors in general were less gendered, and you just did not see the monochromatic pallettes for small children you see now.

So if I put little Yanek into light blue trousers, in context, they are not exactly "girl's clothes," but they are less manly for the time than a pink baby dress (assuming he's three or under when he's wearing the baby dress and older than that when he's wearing the trousers).  But a modern reader would see a graduation from a pink baby dress into a pair of blue trousers as a strong affirmation of his little masculinity.

I think I'm leaving the blue trousers in as an easter egg, and giving them another cue.  It doesn't matter.  The very fact of never being breeched by his caregivers and having to dig up his own trousers years after he ought to have been wearing them is enough to hint that he's going to be struggling and fighting for his manhood. 

Why, yes, I too am surprised that a thread of the book is apparently about masculinity, a subject that doesn't usually interest me much.  How did that happen?  I guess just because I realised that the conditions of Yanek's life kind of lead him in that direction.  Also could have to do with some other stuff I'm suddenly feeling like being coy about, and his two childhood nicknames -- Panachek (little man) and Palachek (Tom Thumb).

Yeah, and I have done away with the little antennas on letters and replaced them wuith dumb-English style spellings because this is a fantasy world and nobody's actually speaking a real particular Western Slavic language.