ok, so here's the background. as a child in the 70's i was part of an experimental education program from 1st through 4th grades that included learning only metric, working at our level of ability not grade level, and learning feminist concepts very young. we studied the "baby x" in 2nd grade. i got it! i've made an effort all my life to not gender typecast people and to celebrate androgyny.
when i was pregnant, i refused to learn what sex my baby would be because i did NOT want to start it out with gifts of pink dresses or blue sleepers so that it would start right out having to fit into a predefined gender role. i didn't go so far as to keep her sex a secret, but when she was born, she had as many blue sleepers as pink sleepers and she had what would be considered boy outfits that i kept and she wore!
when she was around 3 and began to express an interest in what she wanted to wear, she informed me that her favorite color was pink. i wasn't terribly disappointed because i felt that she at least came to that more on her own than having had it decided for her because she's a girl. at school now she wears slacks more often than jumpers even though all of the other girls wear jumpers pretty much all of the time.
but last night i was so disappointed to learn that the typcasting has happened in a big way. oh, i knew that she wouldn't be completely immune to the effects, but i had hoped that she would at least have an ability to recognize that some things just don't matter and that girls and boys are a lot more alike than different. but, we had a terrible battle and it was all about a shirt.
see, abby has chosen to be hermione granger from the harry potter stories for her halloween costume this year. the costume consists of a magic wand, a hogwarts robe and she would wear a shirt and a tie under the robe. we had the tie and robe and wand, but needed to get a white shirt that could be worn with a tie. so, off we went to the mall.
the current style for girls shirts right now just don't work for the costume. blouses either have no collar or are not all white as needed. we found the perfect shirt - a button down oxford collar shirt - in the boys section. you'd have thought i was suggesting that we poison the girl. i bought the shirt, but abby had a 2 hour complete melt-down. i honestly don't know at this point if she will even make it out trick or treating tomorrow night. she is so opposed to wearing a boy's shirt.
i tried to explain that there is no difference! and no, i didn't tell her it buttons on the other side. who knows why that is, and that's not important! that's not what's bothering her anyway. she just does not want to wear boy's clothes. i told her if i'd gone to the store without here and brought that shirt home she'd never even known it came from the boys section! AND i'm telling her, this is halloween where we dress up as things we're not for FUN! all no good.
how does this happen to the child? society is messed up.
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2 comments:
this may seem like a cop out but sometimes there's just simply no accounding for taste .... if the reaction seems incongrurous to the situtation, it just may be her own deeply ingrained homophobia, and yes, that is so unfortunate that a child her age would be so poisoned. well at least you can't blame yourself for this one....
true. i guess if it's something that is authentically hers that's different than something societally taught. but, i don't know that i'd go as far as to say it's homophobic at this point. i don't think she has issues with the people behind the clothes-just the clothes. and i don't recall her ever expressing concern when men wear sarongs and tunics around her.
that in itself seems to lend the idea that she'd be so much more open than she is.
but the good news is, she wore the shirt last night with no protest at all.
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