for girls
Monday, May 14, 2012 at 11:02PM On Sunday, as we meandered Goodwill waiting for the baby to fall asleep so we could go eat Mothers' Day lunch, I asked George if he was in the market for anything in particular. He said he wanted a new baby, so to the baby section we headed. Lest you think he was trying to trade in his sister, he did mean a doll; Baby Tony, his little vanilla-smelly Corolle doll, needed a friend, he told me. On the way to the toys we stopped off at the shoe section, because once I spotted a thrashed pair of Wall-E sneakers there and hope to someday find another, wearable pair because I believe in dreaming impossible dreams. I picked up a pair of sandals -- teva-ish numbers in brown and hot pink -- and asked George what he thought.
"Those for girls."
What?! "Silly mama, those for girls!" he repeated.
Okay. I can say with absolute certainty that neither I nor Nathan have ever told him that something was "for girls" or anyone of any gender, for that matter. He owns and regularly chooses to wear hot pink (and purple, and sparkly unicorn-emblazoned) clothes. He doesn't even have a great grasp of who in his life IS a girl (according to him, everyone but his sister is a "guy"). And yet, there he was, poo-pooing the pink sandals.
There have been a few moments in recent times where I've felt like a contestant on some sort of mean-spirited game show: one where your kid does something, asks a question, makes a comment that requires you to be the perfect parent in response. In this game show, you make the right call and life goes on sort of tenuously as you wait for the next terrifying opportunity to turn your child into a sexist, racist homophobe who eats only simple carbs. An incorrect response, however, is met with a flash forward to your derelict 40 year old son catcalling women on the bus or something. This was one of those moments. I had to stop and suppress the urge to be like what in the hell? I took a deep breath and said,
"There are no boy or girl shoes, just different shoes that different people like for different reasons." Yes, that ought to do it, I thought. I may have even peered around to see if anyone heard me pull off that expert move. George looked satisfied, even appeared to rethink his dismissal of the hot pink shoes (until he spied a pair of black and red crocs). Feeling like I'd dodged a bullet, or even like I stood my ground and dirty-looked the bullet until it turned around in disgrace, I steered us down the toy aisle in search of a baby doll. Before we made it to the sad pile of naked dolls with one eye permanently stuck open and sharpie stained heads, George got distracted by cars. Something Batmobile-esque caught his eye, but an oversized purple VW Bug with working seatbelts seemed more his speed. I held it up. Then.
"Mama, this car for GIRLS! I want to hold that one! The scary one!" Good lord. What the crap? I thought we had just settled this!
"George." I said, "This car is for boys or girls! It's purple; you like purple. Papa has a purple shirt, right?" He looked at me warily. "The black car is for bigger kids." "For bigger GUYS," he insisted. "No," I told him, "bigger kids. Any kids. Any bigger kids." Things were taking a...less articulate turn. I scanned the microfiche in my mind for some relevant article or text on feminism or gender studies and how not to reinforce stereotypical expectations of gender presentation and allow for free expression while supporting your child's own gender identity and and and...
"I want to hold THAT." Huh? "That baby! Oh, so cute! I want to hold that baby! I love it." He was shoving the purple car back at me and pointing excitedly at a half-lidded, cloth bodied doll with limbs akimbo. I took it off the shelf and he snatched it up, cooing at and rocking it like he sees me do with Zelda. He planted a big kiss on its plastic hair. "Is that the toy you choose?" I asked him, and he nodded emphatically. At the cash register, he tried to garner compliments for his new baby by repeating to the cashier, "so cute! Aww, so cute!"
He didn't notice that the woman behind us was buying a black and metallic blue remote control car, and I didn't point it out. It seemed that, despite all my reading, despite my anxiety over the right way to correct him -- gently, factually, without overloading or shaming him -- he figured it out. You know, I'm sure some real a-holes wear pink shoes, but it takes a pretty nice "guy" to fawn over a lazy-eyed, misshapen baby.
Reader Comments (4)
hahaha I LOVE this. I know, where do kids get this stuff? Aima use to think everything was for boys/girls and I think she still does, but she also knows that not everyone thinks that way. She has tried once to say, "i could have that pink one and Junen could have the blue one..." and then she looked at me and probably thought "Oh god, here we go." I just said you could have the pink one but we don't know what colors Junen likes yet. She won't say stuff like that again- she knows better, but society aka other kids, sure can do a number on parental teachings. Funny post.
Kids are funny! Lark is in a princess phase right now...her older sister definitely wasn't into anything like this, so we're entering new territory.
So, a big part of my job is to take whatever my students SAY (whether verbally or in writing), and try to figure out what they MEAN. I like to think there is a certain art to it, and that I have gotten better at it as time goes on. So let me offer an interpretation of what George might have meant (despite what he said).
As you note, he thinks everyone but Zelda is a 'guy'. My guess is, then, that his concept of 'guy' might not map onto ours very well. It might not be a gendered concept at all. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he just thought 'guy' meant 'non-baby'. So when he says that the shoes are for 'girls'... he might have meant that they are for babies. Maybe he thinks that slip-on shoes are the kind of shoes babies wear. Big kids (that is, 'guys') don't wear those shoes.
And the bit about the cars makes me think this interpretation is, at the very least, plausible. "The black car is for bigger kids... For bigger GUYS" suggests that the important factor was not necessarily gender, but age/maturity/size.
I wasn't there, so I am just floating an interpretation... but maybe all George is up to is insisting that he is no longer a baby. He is now a big 'guy'...
Brian, I think you might be on to something. I'm not sure the baby/big kid thing is it *exactly* but it's probably close. The funny thing about Zelda being the only girl is that she's probably the only person he ever hears identified as a girl, since strangers are always asking, "boy or girl?" The shoes were pretty small. Yeah, you may be totally right. You're so smart!