Teacher (who is maybe 40 and has 5 tattoos she told the kids about): I need some strong volunteers to help me move this desk. (Then chooses 3 boys).
Magnolia: I'm strong! I rode 10 miles on my bike yesterday!!
Teacher: But you're wearing such a cute skirt! You don't want to mess that up.
Um.
Is it 1955? Did someone NOT tell me that it's 1955??? WTF. I was on the list to get the memo about time travel becoming a reality. Dammit.
Ok, now, in all seriousness...I'm not worried about Magnolia. This IS the child who told off her kindergarten classmates (she's now in 4th grade) when they told her she couldn't like the movie Cars by telling them all they were gender stereotypers. Yes, that happened. That girl is the product of a very strong willed mother and an exceptionally pro-humankind father. She's going to be fine...she knew enough to share this story with me, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't just shared to get a confirmation on the fact that she was wearing a cute skirt yesterday (it was super cute). But let's be honest for a moment. Our society is totally fucked up.
Recently, Lisa Bloom of the Huffington post had THIS to say about how we talk to little girls. It was an interesting article that circulated through many of my friends' facebook pages. It basically talks about how we often praise girl and boy children very differently, and that we are doing a disservice to little girls when we talk about how cute they are all the time instead of talking about their ability to do things. I found the article interesting, and I for the most part agreed with it, but by no means was it a complete story about what we SHOULD be saying to children...I think about this stuff a lot, as evidenced by one of my old blogs, just this week referenced on my FB page by a friend of mine teasing me. I fear that one of the problems with doing as Ms. Bloom suggests is the lack of balance. There is that song in "A Chorus Line" - "Mother always said I'd be very attractive..when I grew up, when I grew up. Different, she said, with a special something and a very very personal flair......Now different is nice, but it sure isn't pretty. Pretty is what it's about. I never knew anyone who was different who couldn't figure that out."
Shouldn't our goal be to create people (not just women) who recognize that there is a whole-istic approach to someone's worth as a human being? That they can be any number of things, and that the only thing that ultimately matters is their ability to be kind, not only to others, but to themselves as well? Our world isn't perfect, in fact it seems to be slipping further and further from perfection every day...and I want to make sure both my kids are prepared with every possible tool in their arsenal to face it...and honestly, to hopefully fix some of the insanity that's out there.
We want to create an army of girls who are strong, feel confident, with the ability to do whatever they set their mind to...but do we really want to put them into this beauty driven world without the confidence of realizing they can be ALL of those things, and be pretty too? There was the recent uproar over the HORRIFIC shirt (now pulled) from the children's section at J.C. Penny- "I'm too pretty to do homework, so my brother does it for me". UM, WHAT? I feel like the march of the progressive movement should be towards acceptance of others- ALL others. I'm a fat girl. You won't find me blasting skinny ones, cause I've got family members who struggle with that issue just as hard as I struggle with mine. We should be teaching our children that it's not that you're either pretty OR strong OR smart...but you can be all of those things. If I could wave a magic wand, I'd make a world where it didn't matter, but as long as it does, I'd like to prepare my brilliant, gorgeous kid for it.
If you read the link from my blog, you'll see Magnolia had it all figured out at 3. She could be strong, brave, smart, AND sparkly.
