When people asked what I was having while I was pregnant with my first child, I wanted to say, "Kittens." But instead, I answered, "Baby." Boy or girl, I didn't find out until the featherweight human emerged. Turned out he was (is) a beautiful boy. I didn't pick the word "handsome" purposefully: He had a bit of brownish hair, big green eyes, thick eyelashes, prominent owlish eyebrows, full lips and he was petite. Routinely mistaken for a girl, I didn't mind the confusion at all. I liked how pretty he was. Actually, I liked that people thought they knew -- and didn't.
I dressed him in blue and purple and brown and black and green and sometimes pink. As he grew a bit older -- preschool age -- and his love of fairies and sparkly things, "The Wizard of Oz" and Broadway musicals took root, I shopped both sides of the clothing store aisles. If you love flowers and glittery clothing and you've never so much as noticed a dump truck, why should you want a dump truck on your shirt? While some people questioned my encouraging him to love what he loved, I felt quite confident about this.
Physical endeavors -- the playground climber and the tricycle -- were challenging for him and he wasn't at all into sports. Ballet seemed an obvious choice, as he had already been a reindeer in the local Nutcracker. The people who were uncomfortable with his purple coat predictably advised us to have him try karate instead. Yet, to see the serious expression on his face in class and his penchant for the music and his love of the Sugar Plum's tulle, well, I felt like he'd found a home.
I liked that he was a boy learning ballet. I even liked that he was the only boy in his peer group to do so. Beyond the pro-equality side of feminism, this little subversive side of feminism in me was satisfied by chauffeuring the boy ballet dancer to class and waiting around with the mothers of all those girls in pink leotards (my boy wore white t-shirt and black tights). Feeling quite smugly a good parent, I enjoyed proving that it's possible to raise a happy kid without kowtowing to all convention: "Your boy likes baseball? Mine likes ballet. Deal with it."
I wound up with three longhaired boys. The second one dropped out of ballet at eight (unlike his older brother, he belonged to a trio of boy ballet peers), opting instead for soccer and karate. The next one, who considers the stage just about the most torturous place on earth, flat-out rejected offers of ballet class. He has just begun Capoeira. All three boys know they're boys and like being boys and seem entirely comfortable with their choices -- long hair or ballet or soccer or making art or having girl pals and boy pals. Lest you think there are no limits to their snubbing of gender-stereotype, at eight, 12 and 15, none of them would go out in public wearing pink.
Enter the girl. We always assumed that if we had a girl, she would have short hair and wear overalls and play with trucks and be a soccer star. I mean, that would be logical: boy ballet brothers with long hair, sassy tomboy girl. And in our minds, almost regardless of her desires, those would most certainly be ours.
Well, she has long (generally tangled) dark hair, nearly to her waist. A spritely girl, she has dark, shiny eyes and a mouth that is equally cute when grinning or pouting. While we have plenty of overalls for her, she doesn't wear them. Many mornings, she demands dresses (and leggings). She loves wearing the ballerina costume handed down by her cousin -- a shiny, ivory, satiny top with white tulle. Yesterday, she and her best friend went outside in the snow in their red and blue snowsuits (both her snow clothing and her friend's snow gear were handed down from our brother cohort; the purple snow jacket and pants come next) and immediately upon returning inside were out of their coats, snow pants and their clothing and back into their ballet costumes (her friend's is pink). They sat down and built Duplo towers in their frothy finery. They could not have been one iota cuter.
Peggy Orenstein, you totally got to me. After reading your book, I feel all the more resolved not to let the cult of Disney Princesses into her life (or mine). I feel all the more resolved not to call myself fat (even if I think it daily). I wasn't considering mother-daughter spa days or shopping sprees before pretty much inhaling Orenstein's feminist mother shockfest of the girlie girl 4-1-1 these days, "Cinderella Ate My Daughter." But now I'm that much more certain that little old me is going to do my very best to stave off those 26,000 Disney Princess items and not to contribute to the $40 million a month that tween girls spend on beauty products. I didn't want my daughter to have a pink toy computer or pink bicycle before, and I really don't want her to have one now.
But that's not the end of the story. If only.
My daughter's a pretty little girl. I like that she's pretty. I don't want to cut her hair. Despite not liking that I like when she chooses to wear a dress, I totally, secretly do. Most of her clothing is hand-me-downs from brothers and friends. The few things I've bought her, though? I've gotten maybe four dresses, and a skirt with attached leggings. Over the holidays, I surveyed our overcrowded toy collection and deemed there was nothing new necessary. We ended up getting her a few books -- and a pair of red clogs. I mean, really? I bought her shoes? She loved them and I loved giving them to her. I am so busted.
Peggy Orenstein would, I am pretty sure, pat me on the shoulder in a "there, there" kind of way because in her book she describes her own breaks in that '70s feminism "people are people" resolve and her friends', too. I get it; gender equality can't be achieved by anything so simple as girls playing with trucks and boys doing ballet. I'm not alone in knowing that along with the desire to be a great thinker and worker and parent and partner, I also feel pressures to look certain ways and have my house be, if not spotless, then not post-tornado, either. Critique it all we want, we still live in the land that markets Disney Princess items not just to little girls but older girls -- 'tweens and teens -- and even brides. It's in that world we're raising daughters and sons.
So when my feisty, scrappy girl turns a backwards somersault and twirls around endlessly to her brother's music (the soundtrack from Sondheim's "Assassins"), I see that she could be a beautiful ballet dancer. Despite knowing she'd enter into that sea of girls in pink leotards and mostly gruff teachers and competition and stiff, mandatory hairstyles, there's part of me -- me -- smitten with the notion that she might just love ballet. I haven't signed her up. Yet.
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It's an excellent practice to raise kids to be themselves and do what they love. I happen to gain a lot from conforming to feminine roles. The problem with people who want to live in a de-gendered society is that you don't acknowledge the great benefit of gender roles, or the great benefit, say, femininity can bring to the table. Yes, I said femininity -- unfortunately, I know a lot of feminists who think that's a dirty word. Yes, I'm a feminist; yes, I love pink and princesses and I work with young children and I wear skirts and have long hair. It's like, what's the big deal with gender roles?
These thoughts are obviously fluid, open to change. I'm just thinking out loud here.
I've heard so much discourse recently on this topic apparently because of the release of this book that I am beginning to wonder -- are we criticizing little boys and parents for encouraging violent play (with soldiers, transformers, guns, swords etc.)?
And my older one has had to wear a skirt once in a while, every year or so. I humbly admit it's because I think she looks very pretty in a skirt. So sue me. :P
My middle boy is a rough-and-tumble, sensitive sweetheart who's not afraid to eat lunch with his mom at school.
All that said, I don't remember my oldest having that many girly friends when she was little. I think Peggy Orenstein is on to something, and I refuse to let my girly-girl grow up limiting herself to pink. Thankfully, she seems to have moved on to green. Whew.
On another note as a cake decorator, we would make 'stock' cakes to fill the case for those last minute shoppers who did not order one. One that we made frequently was a plain cake that we airbrushed red yellow and blue, which made a rainbow when the colors overlapped. A little boy of about 5 came in and started jumping up and down pointing at the cake saying 'that's the one I want dad!' The father told him 'that cake is for girls.' boy 'I don't care dad I love it!' dad 'you can't have that one, you are not a little queer' At this point the boy was almost crying, looking at the floor, and said 'I don't care dad you pick one'.
On the opposite spectrum, I made a Tinkerbell cake with Happy Birthday Collin written on it. The mother picking up the cake had 2 little girls and a boy in the cart with her, all wearing fairy wings.
I owe alot to my Ma for who I am today. My personality was always rebellious. Had she been less insistent, would I be as successful? I am at my best when people tell me what I can't do. It makes me want to do it all the more. I wonder why that is?
Nature WILL take it's course.
With that being said, my niece was a total tomboy as a child. Refused to wear dresses, pink or anything with ruffles and played mostly with boys. Her favorite item of clothing was a t-shirt with a bunch of plastic insects attached to it. She grew into a very heterosexual young woman who loves beautiful, feminine dresses and abhors insects.
purpose) between being honest to herself about any preconceived notions she has about her children while still totally alert and attuned to their inclinations. That takes a highly-refined level of self-acceptance and respect for individuality....and genuine delight in seeing a child's
life unfold. This post has captured what I see as ideal and evolved parental attitudes and feelings....
and not easily achieved given all the pressures of day-to-day parenting. And even though the specific topic is about gender issues and socialization, one can extrapolate to many
areas encountered in rearing children. All benefit when parents know themselves and really "get" their kids!
Good point. The more the parents understand themselves, the more likely they will be to understand their children as individuals and not as extensions of themselves. Seeing, accepting, and loving children for who they are gives them license to shine!
Actually, the text to that point gives exactly the opposite impression: that there was no limit to their (your) embracing of gender-stereotype, just with the gender reversed.
My sons wore some hand-me-downs from their female cousins when they were younger, and occasionally got mistaken for girls. It's no big deal. But I never put them in anything with flowers or glitter. Pink garbage is no good for kids, of either sex.
It's about keeping artificial gender baggage from taking over your kids' minds, not about changing one kind for another.