Aren't I just basically a human being?
I was really noticing something in the past few days, something I had noticed before, but it really stuck out to me today: how very gendered merchandise can be.
I just finished reading an article about a boy's transition from female to male when starting kindergarten, and it talked about how much effort it was because they had to change everything -- all the clothes, socks, underwear, bedding and room decor.
And I thought back to my childhood and how most of my stuff was pretty well gender-neutral. Just plain regular bedding and curtains. When I got older, the curtains had a patriotic theme and there was a poster of Snoopy on a surfboard with "Cowabunga!" in a thought bubble, and by then I had a vanity -- well, a girl does need a mirror, right? As a child I had tinkertoys, wooden blocks, stuffed animals, a circus play set, crayons, Hot Wheels cars and baseball cards...and yes, a few dolls. I built model cars and airplanes, I had paper dolls, and I wove potholders out of those nylon loops (as did my brother).
I feel like, in the sixties and seventies, sure there were girlish things and boyish things, but it was all a bit looser.
Also circulating is the other article about the girl who likes Star Wars, and the other girls were giving her grief for having Star Wars shirts and a Star Wars backpack. They told her she was turning into a boy. And the daughter of a woman I work with gets some of her shirts from the boys' department because the girls' didn't have any with dinosaurs -- no one's teasing her about it, but why would the dinosaurs be a "boy" thing anyway?
We aren't just awakening to the fact that there's a problem about gendering. Certain aspects of this problem have been getting very much worse in the past five decades or so, with the pinking of toy aisles and the awful selection in the girls' clothing department. It is still possible to be more on the neutral side as a parent making purchases for her children, but definitely more difficult in some areas. And some parents seem to really want to go to the extremes instead.
I wonder if I just grew up in a "golden age." I missed the fifties, having been born in 1960, so I don't know what childhood was like. But maybe all this girl/boy division we are seeing now is a sort of backlash from the way adult roles have changed, with women expected to work, if not for the same pay, and many jobs open to both genders that didn't used to be. Maybe pink footballs and pink tool kits and all-pink sports jerseys for your favorite team and all unicorns and rainbows and no dinos or wookies is a way of reinforcing that certain people are female and ought not to forget it, regardless of the fact that they can possibly get a job in almost any field they like and make their own decisions on whether to use contraception or not.
Here is the article that sparked the writing of this post.
[Edited to add a bit of clarity and a link.]
This entry was originally posted at http://freshermind.dreamwidth.org/88987.html. Comments cheerfully accepted at either place.
I just finished reading an article about a boy's transition from female to male when starting kindergarten, and it talked about how much effort it was because they had to change everything -- all the clothes, socks, underwear, bedding and room decor.
And I thought back to my childhood and how most of my stuff was pretty well gender-neutral. Just plain regular bedding and curtains. When I got older, the curtains had a patriotic theme and there was a poster of Snoopy on a surfboard with "Cowabunga!" in a thought bubble, and by then I had a vanity -- well, a girl does need a mirror, right? As a child I had tinkertoys, wooden blocks, stuffed animals, a circus play set, crayons, Hot Wheels cars and baseball cards...and yes, a few dolls. I built model cars and airplanes, I had paper dolls, and I wove potholders out of those nylon loops (as did my brother).
I feel like, in the sixties and seventies, sure there were girlish things and boyish things, but it was all a bit looser.
Also circulating is the other article about the girl who likes Star Wars, and the other girls were giving her grief for having Star Wars shirts and a Star Wars backpack. They told her she was turning into a boy. And the daughter of a woman I work with gets some of her shirts from the boys' department because the girls' didn't have any with dinosaurs -- no one's teasing her about it, but why would the dinosaurs be a "boy" thing anyway?
We aren't just awakening to the fact that there's a problem about gendering. Certain aspects of this problem have been getting very much worse in the past five decades or so, with the pinking of toy aisles and the awful selection in the girls' clothing department. It is still possible to be more on the neutral side as a parent making purchases for her children, but definitely more difficult in some areas. And some parents seem to really want to go to the extremes instead.
I wonder if I just grew up in a "golden age." I missed the fifties, having been born in 1960, so I don't know what childhood was like. But maybe all this girl/boy division we are seeing now is a sort of backlash from the way adult roles have changed, with women expected to work, if not for the same pay, and many jobs open to both genders that didn't used to be. Maybe pink footballs and pink tool kits and all-pink sports jerseys for your favorite team and all unicorns and rainbows and no dinos or wookies is a way of reinforcing that certain people are female and ought not to forget it, regardless of the fact that they can possibly get a job in almost any field they like and make their own decisions on whether to use contraception or not.
Here is the article that sparked the writing of this post.
[Edited to add a bit of clarity and a link.]
This entry was originally posted at http://freshermind.dreamwidth.org/88987.html. Comments cheerfully accepted at either place.