We were standing in a gas station in Tennessee the first time I heard her say it.
She was holding a bottle of Bug Juice in her tiny hands, carefully carrying it up to the counter all by herself. Her brother had a similar bottle, but his was filled with blue juice. Emma’s was green, which she had picked out all by herself.
“Oh no. I need a new one,” Emma was staring at the bottle in her hand.
“What’s the matter baby?”
“I need a different one. This one is a boy color.”
“What? It’s green! It’s just a cool color. You’re fine,” I assured her. But she would have none of it.
“It’s a boy color. It’s for boys,” she insisted, and proceeded to swap out the green juice for a bottle of red Bug Juice. Apparently red is for girls.
I didn’t think much of it at the time. Boy color, girl color, whatever. Just swap out your juice so we can pay and get back in the car. Weirdo.
But over the last few days since she’s been home, I’ve heard it over and over again.
“No, that sticker is for boys. I want the girl sticker.”
“Diego is a boy. It’s for boys. I am not watching that!”
“I can’t watch Dora’s cowboy movie. It has cowboys. Cowboys are for boys.“
What the hell is going on? When did my daughter – who insists on sharing everything with her brother and refuses to wear ponytails or skirts – start labeling everything as belonging to one sex or the other?
While I’m sure that this tendency to lump yourself in with one group or another is a natural part of her development, it makes me cringe every time I hear “no, that’s for boys”. Her willingness to mark half of the world as Off Limits – For Boys baffles me.
Where is the fierce independence? Where is the stubborn insistence that she can have it all?
I always assumed we were born feminists and it was a patriarchal society that convinced us that his and hers and gender limitations was normal and acceptable.
But she’s three. THREE. And she’s surely not being raised in a household where anything is off limits because you’re a girl. Hell, if anything I would expect her to be running around claiming everything as “HERS” and “MINE”.
At least that I would understand.
———————————————————————————————
Speaking of things I don’t understand – tonight we’re tackling Ageism on Clearly, You’re Retarded at 9pm Est. From the show page you can listen live, chat, review and download past episodes!
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Posted in Kids and Parenting - Real Mommy Blogging Tagged: "clearly you're retarded", daughter, feminism, parenting, radio show
Hmm, wonder where Emma has been for the last three weeks learning that?
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Ditto Avi.
I started teaching that 2 days. Literally… 2 days.
Wait… you said feminism. That isn’t the same as male bashing, is it?
Shit. See, Kate said, “Penises make boys stupid.” when she was 2. I was impressed.
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New habits picked up where, exactly? I wonder…
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You will need to teach her everyday its ok to wear blue crocs or drink green juice but her brother cannot wear her Dora crocs to the store. Only in the house.
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One of the classes my boyfriend had to take in college was a class about gender identity and this is one of the issues that they talked about in great detail. So I can sum up a couple weeks of lectures in about 4 sentences.
First just to be clear this is nothing you did or didn’t do. Secondly this is 100% normal for all children to do. You probably didn’t notice it will your son because there was not a girl around. All kids do this to help them understand their world. The children are creating these rolls that blue is for boys and pink is for girls. It will probably last until she discovers boys in some fashion but it is important for her right now to do this to classify her world.
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Hey – ho – don’t be lumping me into that “wonder where she’s been for three weeks” stuff.
Nooooooooooooooooo
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With the dozens of nieces and nephews I have, I can say unequivocally, an older kid. A kid at the age where they go EWWWWWW about kids of the opposite sex. That’s the age where all things GIRL are defined in reds and pinks and ponies and all things BOY are defined in blues and greens and snakes. It passes and it’s no one’s fault that it happens. They hear some other kids talking that way so they do. Soon enough they figure out for themselves that all that stuff is too confining. Then they get all individual on you and want to dye their hair blue.
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My daughter is 13, my son is 3. He is very much all about “boy things”. The teenager is all about everything being hers, or wanting it to be hers. It is a stage, and Emma will grow out of it!!
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My daughter did that, too – for a while (and she certainly never learned it from me!). But now she’s over it. Now, she thinks girls are smarter and better than boys, and she likes to prove it. Eventually, I am hoping she’ll level out.
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unbelievable how young that stuff filters through to them. Hmmmm, i think now would be a good time.
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I have picture proof that I went through this stage.
I’m holding my nose the kicking the ‘icky boy toys’ away from me. The picture is cute now some 17 or 18 years later but at the time my parents were a little peeved that I didn’t want any of the toys they had just bought for Christmas.
I grew out of that phase. But my room is pink, so maybe I haven’t.
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Gender socialization is a huge deal, and good for you for noticing it. Most parents let these things slide by as “cute” or “awww”-tastic, but it’s really not okay!
I love that you told her that its not a boy color, because its not! Colors are gender-neutral (or at least they should be), and I think the time to start talking to kids about feminism is yesterday, so power to you!
xoxo.
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My niece is 3 and does the same thing. She refused to wear blue or green because they were boy colors…so her mother and I wore blue and green and when she said something was a boy thing we had to explain to her that there was no such thing – then she asked why girls don’t have penises and there went that boy/girl thing. damn having a mother who is a doctor and has anatomy books around
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I tried to subscribe to your feed but it didn’t show up on my homepage at yahoo.com. Is it working correctly?
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My daughter (just shy of three and a half) has been developing the same opinions… girl things, boy things, colours, etc. I don’t like it any more than you do, and honestly sometimes it drives me nuts. However, ultimately I think they will figure this stuff out themselves. My wife was a pink-pink-pink baby, but eventually decided blue was her favourite colour.
But yeah, gender stereotyping at three? Not fun.
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OK, see….I’d be happy if my daughter wanted to disassiciate herself with anything boy related! And I’d be happier still if she stayed like that until she was 85! I had to buy her a bra…..A frickin’ bra people, and there was a boy sniffing around in the last place we were living! (nipped that in the bud fast!)
My 9 year old, however, is a rabid WWE fan AND a princess. It is interesting to see a tiny blond girly girl, watching Monday Night RAW, in a frilly dress, screaming “GIVE HIM THE F-U! HIT ‘EM WITH A CHAIR!”
Yeah….. that’s my life……
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My eldest, when he was little, once told his mother he didn’t need to know how to make a bed because, “I’m not going to be a woman when I grow up.”
He didn’t get the division-of-labor idea from me. It had been a nephew.
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It’s a phase babe. It’s not about her having been gone to Iowa. You know that she surely hasn’t been taught that by your mother! Afterall where do you think you got your feminism values from!?
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I think it is a phase. My boys are very in tune with what is girly and what is for boys even though I keep stressing to them that they can play with whatever they want and like whatever they want. At least I hope it is just a phase.
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Boy stuff/girl stuff is very normal. But I would also listen to older boys who are around her. They tend to say things like that too if they don’t want to watch what the little girl chooses (“I don’t wanna watch that girl show! Or that baby show!”) or if they want the little girl to ‘go away’ while they enjoy the more ‘boy’ pursuits.(“You can’t play this because you’re a girl.” or “This is a boy’s game”)
I wouldn’t make too much of a big deal about it to Emma,she will grow past it and learn to make her own decisions.
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I think it’s pretty normal, but they do get cues from the outside.
Lil’ M has said things like that before; I challenge him and ask why, then set him straight.
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Uh Oh, I think she’s been brainwashed the past weeks…
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I let my 4yo wear boys underwear b/c they don’t make Handy Manny or Diego or Toy Story undies for girls. She also had a Toy Story birthday party.
I’m either raising a feminist or a lesbian. Or both.
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“I always assumed we were born feminists and it was a patriarchal society that convinced us that his and hers and gender limitations was normal and acceptable.”
Real feminism always did involve ignoring a few key truths in human development.
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Both of my kids (a boy and girl) are already showing signs of this. This, despite my insistence that my son can play with dolls, watch Dora…and my insistence that my daughter can play with trucks and tractors and get dirty.
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It’s never to early to teach the important “isms”.
Start with humanism and it goes organically from there.
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UNDO!
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fucking iowa!!
hehe
britt, she is your little one and will lose those ideas as quick as she picked em up. i have the utmost confidence in you.
regarding the show tonight, i will be in the chatroom, jumping up and down for mandatory driving tests for the elderly. motherfuckers drive me nuts when they have slow reaction time and drive 15 miles under the damn limit. rrrrrrrr!
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She’s just trying to figure out who she is. A lot of times my niece will try to verify questions she has about gender by asking, “Is that for boys?” We can’t deny that what we choose defines who we are to ourselves and to the people around us.
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This is an interesting topic. The first grouping of humans is by gender. It is the first thing that is declared – it’s a girl or it’s a boy.
It is natural I think to have differences – we are two parts of a whole system.
I think it’s incredibly hard to teach children about feminism and the achievements of women, because there is so much that we as mothers and fathers don’t even know.
Look at the lack of recognition of the suffragettes.
Thanks to their victory, which was a 144 year struggle, women now have voices and choices!
But most people are totally in the dark about HOW the suffragettes won, and what life was really like for women before they did.
I would like to offer your readers a women’s history learning opportunity.
“The Privilege of Voting” is a new free e-mail series that follows eight great women from 1912 – 1920 to reveal ALL that happened to set the stage for women to win the vote.
This is no boring history report.
Two beautiful and extremely powerful suffragettes — Alice Paul and Emmeline Pankhurst are featured, along with Edith Wharton, Isadora Duncan, Alice Roosevelt and two presidential mistresses.
There are tons of heartache for these heroines on the rocky road to the ballot box, but in the end, they WIN!
Unique sequential e-mail series — each exciting episode is about 10 minutes — perfect to enjoy during coffeebreaks, or anytime.
Subscribe free at
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Thanks, and keep up the great work with this blog!
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My 5 year old has always been the same way, and the best I can figure, it’s from commercials. My girl loves pin, NO BLUE! Always has. She has known boy from girl things and I never taught her. I think it’s just inbred them somehow. And my neighbors little boy is 2 and already doesn’t like “girl” things!
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I have 2 boys and a girl They are more about pink and purple are GIRL colors. Unfortunately for Mr. Schmitty, my boys love pink and purple. My girl? She’d rather go with black.
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Loved this post. It is amazing how quickly they pick up gender stereotypes. My son has played barbies with his sister all summer long, but she will rue the day she tells ANY of his friends about it!
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I think this is a nature versus nurture argument here. The Boy at around that age went through a “girls can’t be knights” stage, and he’s still not a big fan of pink. Honestly, he’s got feminist all around him.
I remember speaking to one of the educators about it, and she said it’s like all of a sudden they realize that there are different genders. I just kept re-asserting the message. “Girls can be knights and you can be a princess.” That last bit always got a big chuckle.
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Isabella missed the Diego memo. she loves the CRAP out of him
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She’s got to be picking it up somewhere. I read an article once about a time period where pink was considered a masculine color.
A good friend went through a period where he daughter suddenly started saying that rough housing was for boys and sports were for boys. He sat her down and let her know that NOTHING was just for boys or just for girls and she should feel free to do what makes her happy. You’re fighting serious social BS for the next what, ten years to forever?
Fight it! Fight it!
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Gender identification is peripheral to feminism. Your approach, in my humble opinion, is great. You’ve explained that your daughter has a choice. If she wants to be a “girly-girl,” and only drink girl colors for the rest of her natural life, I think that’s ok. As long as she knows there’s nothing wrong with choosing a boy color now and then.
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My two girls NEVER did this. It’s a learned behavior, in my opinion. Children don’t naturally know that something is for boys or for girls unless someone TELLS them that. I really think that someone influenced Emma’s thinking.
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NOW. Start teaching her now. Otherwise, in a couple years, she’s going to be coming home from school saying, “I can’t do well in science or math. They are for boys. Boys are good in those subjects.” It happens, believe me.
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I’ve told Pan and Tink that there is no such thing as boy toys or girl toys or girl colors or boy colors. Tink has hot wheel cars, and Pan used to play in the housekeeping all the time in daycare. We are an equal opportunity household.
(and don’t forget I live in Iowa)
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When my boys were babies they started making those “car” sounds and I swear I didn’t teach them that. They pretended to take imaginary vehicles and they did it. Granted, if we lived 300 years ago when no cars were around I would probably explain it as “boy. make fart sound. sound good. ugg.”
My crayon colors were always divided into boy and girl colors. What can I say? Your daughter is following tradition.
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I have quite a few kids and it definitely hits all kids differently and with different types of things. You don’t want to limit them to “gender stereotypes” but you also want them to realize that boys and girls ARE different. It’s a balancing act that has less to do with you than with their interaction with other kids. You just have to field the questions.
FMD
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avitable: I can’t imagine her picking it up with family.
AmyD:
no – it’s NOT the same.
Karl: the timing seems a little.. odd.
Jennifer: oh hell no. No child of mine will wear crocs.
Dickie Maxx: I figured it was normal – but it creeps me out just the same.
Britt’s Mom: yeah, you made her wear a princess costume, didn’t you?? I’m on to you woman!
Winter: I don’t remember being so startled by it with Devin.
Becky: it’s a bizarre stage! LOL
Sybil Law: eventually, how could she not with you as her mom?
Blue Streak: yeah, apparently now is the PERFECT time.
Sarah: I can absolutely picture Emma doing the same thing.
Miss Elle: thanks
libragirl: ohh, pointing out things I wear in those colors is a good idea.
SciFi Dad: yeah, I’m sure she’ll get there and definitely isn’t “done” at three. But I’m with you, it’s still freaky to hear.
blondefabulous: hey, at least she’s putting the girls in a bra!
delmer: oh heeeellllllll no.
Kristin: oh God no, I know. I didn’t think at all it came from that.
Kathryn: I think I need to pay more attention to my son’s thoughts on this too.
metalmom: well I’m not dragging her out to feminist rallies or anything.
Finn: that’s what I’m trying to do too.
DutchBitch:
A Whole Lot of Nothing: GOOD FOR YOU!!!!
HE-MAN: what the fuck is “real feminism”?
Or did you mean “extreme” feminism – which is not at all the same thing.
Jennifer: it’s like we are talking to ourselves, isn’t it?
B.E. Earl: you know, sometimes you are so damn smart and wise, I wonder if someone has hacked into your account.
Poppy: LOL
hello haha narf: poor Iowa is taking a lot of heat here! hehehe
Smiley: ugh, even hearing it that way – I don’t want “who she is” to be defined by what she “can’t have”.
Virginia Harris: holy crap that’s a lot of info for one comment. Um, thanks?
Robina: nature vs. nurture?
Mrs. Schmitty: Devin has always liked Blue and Red – no issue there at all.
May: yeah, and unfortunately that’s just life.
Nat: and he CAN be a princess if he wants!!!
ali: I’ll have Emma update her.
lizriz: I feel like I should have a pin that says “I’m fighting the good fight!” hehehe
Faiqa: yes, exactly – if she chooses pink and “girly” and WHATEVER – cool. Just as long as she knows that it’s a CHOICE, not a requirement.
Lisa: yeah, I don’t think it makes sense that girls are “naturally” attracted to pink. I think they pick those things up somewhere – be it TV, other kids, adults, whatever. I don’t think we are aware of how much is being passed on to our kids 24/7.
Shelli: oh now that is just SAD.
Fantastagirl: lol – way to be a voice for Iowa here!
Mocha: my son never did that with cars.
Emma always has.
Fu Manchu Dad: oh, I don’t know. I think I can play a bigger part than just fielding the questions.
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Britt, I don’t think that there is an age to start teaching your daughter how to be a little girl. If you have already begun to teach your son how to appreciate homosexuality, then you should fee equally sure about teaching your daughter how to be a girl.
Peace,
Toni
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