A Glossary of Terms in Fierce & Sweet

A few words I use often, defined clearly in one place.

Fierce & Sweet

The core idea behind everything I design: kids are whole people, capable of being bold and tender in the same breath. Not one or the other, not a choice between them. Both, always, at once. A design is "fierce and sweet" when it refuses to soften strength or apologize for gentleness, no matter which child is wearing it. It's less a style than a standard I hold every piece to before it makes it into the shop.

Gender-Neutral

Clothing, marketing, or design that isn't split by gender at all. No "boys' section" and "girls' section," no pink-versus-blue default, just one catalog offered identically to every child. Gender-neutral doesn't mean plain or colorless; it means the same bold shark tee is marketed to any kid, with nothing about the design itself deciding who's allowed to wear it. Everything Fierce & Sweet makes is designed this way from the start, not adapted afterward. It also means that any child can choose pink or blue. Or any other color.

The Predator/Prey Pattern

Something I noticed while watching kids' films with my granddaughter: predators are overwhelmingly male, prey overwhelmingly female. Research backs this up:  a 2025 study of nearly 1,900 animal characters in children's films found predator characters cast as male over 80% of the time, with prey characters skewing heavily female, and children as young as four had already absorbed the association. It's subtle in any single movie, but it repeats constantly across the genre, teaching girls early on to see themselves as something to be hunted rather than something powerful. Naming this pattern is the first step to designing against it.

Character Coding

The broader term for what the predator/prey pattern is one example of: the practice of assigning personality traits, roles, or morality to a character based on demographic signals — gender, species, appearance — rather than the actual story. A character gets "coded" as brave, dangerous, gentle, or weak before they've done anything to earn it, just by matching a familiar pattern. Fierce & Sweet exists to interrupt that shortcut, one design at a time.

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