Lipstick Feminism (for Kids!)

“Is daddy going to be mad you didn't ask permission to buy me Twinkle Toes?” my daughter asked as we left the mall, sparkly-flowery-rainbow sneakers on her feet.

She knew her dad was going to hate her new shoes, just like she knows he hates princess stuff. I knew he was going to hate those shoes. I hated those shoes. But her worry that he would be upset with her caught me off-guard. Not to mention… exactly how did we get to this moment in her young life when she thinks I need his approval to buy her sneakers?

Twinkle Toes—for those without a seven-year-old girl—look like a glitter store and a bow factory threw up on perfectly normal sneakers. Plus, they light-up, because why stop there? In other words, they’re as easy to ridicule as anything else little girls love.

I try to let weather be my only objection to how my kids dress. So, why did I hate those shoes so much? It started to feel sexist—my strong reaction to over-the-top girly-ness.

When my daughter was still a baby, wearing a plain brown hoodie over her bald little head, someone said to me, “There’s nothing cuter than a girl who isn’t dressed in pink!” 

I know that some people look at my daughter and other girls, with their pink and purple, sequined, flouncy ensembles, and feel… annoyed. I know because I used to think like that, too—before I had a daughter who loves nothing more than being fancy. Girls who don’t dress that way—what used to be called tomboys—are admired, while girly girls are dismissed.

So, basically, I was doing my feminist duty when I bought my daughter the most girly-girl shoes in the entire mall. When we got home and my husband saw the shoes, I think his jaw dropped.

“Are you mad, daddy?” she asked.

“Daddy’s not mad. He just needs a minute,” I interrupted with a look that said: You. Say. Nothing. “She thought I needed your permission to buy her these sneakers…Which is crazy, isn’t it?” I said slowly, enunciating each word. Translation: “Unless you want our daughter to think you’re the boss of me, you will keep any objections to your.own.damn.self.”

I love the way my daughter dresses—she’s a tiny version of who I’d be if I had never heard the words “supposed to” or “that clashes.” I love that she’s so much more free than me, not just expressive, but confident in her fabulousness. I am extremely boring with clothes. Most days, I choose the least smelly item from the wrinkled rainbow of black, gray and dark gray clothes laying on my bedroom floor.  

The Twinkle Toes really only made it out of the store because wearing ballet flats and slippery boots was impeding her on the playground—she needed sneakers she would actually wear. And then, I thought about shoes I loved as a little girl. I wasn’t especially girly, but both pairs I remember were so very pink—moccasins with beads and fringe, and faux leather lace-up booties with tiny perforated holes all over the sides.

When she put them on and instantly started running laps around the store, I thought: She’s going to remember these shoes. I could see the wiring in her little kid brain changing in front of my eyes, making a permanent memory of this. Once I’m channeling my little girl self, my 40-year-old mom-self doesn’t stand a chance.

Another way to describe Twinkle Toes is that they look like what would happen if someone gave a little girl white sneakers and a bunch of art supplies. Especially if they included a Bedazzler. They are everything my girly-girl could want—rhinestones, sparkle, neon colors…

I realize there’s not a straight line between my daughter’s creativity and what some company decided girls would go for. Except… Except, if I try to rein her in, what message does that send about self-expression? Am I telling her that what she likes is unacceptable, out-of-bounds, ugly? That hyper-girly things are unacceptable, out-of-bounds, ugly?

When she was 2, my daughter was the first one at her preschool to don the inevitable tutu and crown. My daughter—with her black hoodie, blue “D is for Dizzy” (Gillespie) t-shirt, and anything else gray and “gender-neutral” we could find—was the one who wanted the tulle and glitter!

Around that time, I read with concern about a study that purported to show that boys are more active than girls on the playground—until I got to where they explained their methodology. Apparently, researchers counted the number of days that the girls were wearing dresses and assumed that they must not be running and jumping and climbing…in dresses! Because… girls?

Well, she’s not headed for professional sports, but my daughter’s best day playing soccer was when I was so pregnant I didn’t notice she was wearing a tutu when I put her in the car, and couldn’t handle the fight to get her out of it when we arrived. She ran around that day like girly-ness was her superpower.

With gratitude to all of the parents who fought for our daughters’ right to play soccer, maybe it’s time for us to support their right to wear tutus while they do it. Symbolically speaking. It’s not the same now as when my mother was forced to wear only dresses with knee socks to school, even in winter. Girls today can wear whatever they want… but not without condescension.

We never know what our kids are going to turn us into. I bought “boy” clothes and trucks and balls for my little girl, and still… She has turned me into the kind of feminist who needs to learn how to unapologetically allow her to be unapologetically a girl.

The day after we bought the Twinkle Toes, we took a walk, and she literally hopped and jumped and ran the whole way. Just like a little kid should. No limitations. No inhibitions. Nothing to stop her now.

Also, I now know there’s an off-switch, at least for the flashing lights.

The Camo Aisle

You probably already knew that all dogs are boys and all cats are girls, right?

But how much do you know about just how far the gendering of the animal kingdom has gone. Butterflies, ladybugs, horses, birds, dolphins, leopards, peacocks, rabbits, koalas, chipmunks, mice, foxes?  All girls. And for the boys? Sharks, whales, lions, tigers, raccoons, caterpillars, bears, monkeys, moose, and of course, dinosaurs. Obviously. Bees and owls and porcupines can still go both ways. For now.

The hyper-gendering of small children is a pretty recent accomplishment. But we’ve come to a strange moment in history where it’s no longer a matter of pink for girls, blue for boys. It's pink vs. camo. And that's a problem. Much more of a problem than all the pinkest pink fluffy ribbons, bows and tutu-spinning fairy princesses you can fit in a toy store.

Wander into any kids clothing or toy store, and, when you come out of the pink, it’s like you’ve stepped into a warzone. Wall-to-wall camouflage. Guns, weapons of any sort, and the clothing to match. Perhaps it shouldn’t be such a surprise, living as we now do, in a country perpetually at war.

Have you ever seen the bumper sticker, “I’m already against the next war”? That’s me. That's how I was raised. Despite the absence of the green-gray-black colored camouflage clothing and the violent toys of future American soldiers in our home, my son has already asked me for a “super shooter.” My son, who is dressed up like a ballerina and plays with his sister and her friends most of the time. My heart may have skipped a bit the day. I worry for him. I know the tide is turning in many circles of a manhood defined by physical strength and the "be a man" school of emotional learning.  

With our first child, we wanted to wait to discover the baby's gender at birth. The baby shower was a gender-neutral affair (by which I mean yellow ducks and green frogs everywhere). The pink only came when the birth of a girl was announced. And like any good new mom with a decade of New York under her belt, I dressed my daughter in brown and black and gray.

When she started dressing herself at age two, it was all dresses and pink and purple. Does looking girly make her less than? Of course not. And by that time, I was already asking "What's so awful about pink anyway?" But when she wear pants (rare) or looks more gender neutral (translation: boy-ish), does it sometimes warm my feminist mommy heart? Sure.

This moment seems to be defined by the belief that, "Girls can do anything. But boys must do boy things." And so, it was the birth of my son that really opened my feminist eyes to what gender looks like in America today.

 “Tom-boy” girls are nearly universally adored (as long as they grow out of it as teens, of course). Deviation from “boy play,” on the other hand, can be deadly. Literally. There are boys who are killed by homophobia because—despite gay weddings and Ellen and that football player—there are so many more conversations we need to have.

The thing about little ones is that they amble along in their little blurry world, not caring and not noticing, until one day, they do. By three and a half or so, the divide begins. The number of boys who play with girls and the girls who hang with the boys is down to the one or two kids who manage to find room for themselves in both spaces. And to the kids who know that what the world is telling them they like isn’t what they like. This crap is internalized and we need to pay attention to what we are bringing to it. Those of us who care about gender equity--it starts so early, and it's important. Important enough that lives are lost. 

I don’t recommend googling “boy killed by parents who thought he was gay.” There’s more than one story there. But maybe read just this, “Gay Dad’s Open Letter to Zachary Dutro-Boggess." If you can stomach it, there’s a lot more: “Mother, Boyfriend Murdered 4-year old Because he might have been gay” or “Accused of Being Gay by His Mother Before She Killed Him." Living where I do, traveling in the circles I do, I have trouble believing these things still really happen. I am shocked every time. 

It’s nearly Halloween, and if you walk into your favorite mega-super store, take a look at the boys’ costumes section. From camo to superheroes, all of the costumes are bulging with fake muscles. It's disturbing. How outraged would we be if little girls’ costumes all had fake boobs? I try not to say “never” as a mother, so I’ll just say this:  I hope like hell my son isn’t enticed by that vision of manhood. A vision that would have little boys feel just as inadequate in their bodies as little girls have felt since sometime around the invention of Barbie. That’s not equality. That’s lose-lose.

Of course, they don’t realize what it means to really shoot someone or that people are killed in warzones every day, or that real heroes don’t show their power with muscles like that. The answer, I believe is rarely “Just say no.” The answer is somewhere in the conversations we have with our kids.

When we ask the boys what they are shooting from their guns, their little voices still reply “bubbles” or “marshmallows” or the much-loved “lasers.” But one day they won’t answer that way. And not long after that, many of them will find our country presenting them with an open invitation to see what war is really like.

Not long ago, my kids’ pre-school director told a groups of parents that when she was new to teaching, she was as concerned as we are about creating a “gender neutral” environment. She was careful not to let gender stereotypes reign supreme in her classroom. And then she said something like this: “I tired that for a while and then I learned something you’re not going to want to hear.” Pause. “After 10 years of teaching, here’s what I’ve learned…Are you ready for it? Because I’m just gonna say it… Boys and girls are different. They just are. I'm sorry. They just are." 

As long as the loud voices out there continue to wax poetic about how terrible the pink aisle is for our girls (and for girls only!), and never think to mention the camo aisle and the fake super-hero muscles, we still have a lot of work to do.

Do you know the age of the average kid, almost always a boy, killed in an accidental shooting in America? Three. My son’s age now.

The Pink Problem

When I was little, my mom’s relationship with my grandparents was bad enough at times to include years of silence. I think my parents had three kids before my dad convinced my mom to bring us to see them. It felt tense, being in their home. For me, the quiet pleaser, it was all about keeping the peace, hoping no one would explode.

That was the backdrop of my first memory of the color pink—my grandmother asking me if it was my favorite color, assuming it was my favorite color. I think she was giving me a pink dress. She didn’t know much more about me than that I was a girl and so obviously I liked girl things, pink things. It wasn’t my favorite color, not that I know now what my favorite color was (as shocking as my kids find it that I don’t know what my favorite color was!). What I do remember is looking into my redheaded, feminist, not-pink-loving mom’s eyes that seemed to say, “It’s okay to do the easy thing, even if it’s not true.” So, yes, of course pink was my favorite color. I was a little girl and thank you very much for the dress.

I’m not sure I thought about pink again until 20 years later when my best friend, a mother of two girls, showed up one day in pink running shoes. It was one of those memories you look back on with great humility after you become a parent—I actually judged my friend for changing as a parent into someone who would wear pink. Gasp! As I sit here typing, I’m wearing a) a dress, b) purple tights and c) pink ballet flats. Pink and purple are my daughter’s favorite colors and I like when my outfits delight her.

Did you know that Pantone declares a color of the year? This year it’s radiant orchid (purple). When my daughter was born it was Blue Iris (a shade of blue), and for my son it was Honeysuckle (oh so pink). If she knew, she’d be so jealous and really want to trade. The room they share now is blue. When we painted my daughter’s baby room, it was a very pale color called Milk Glass Pink. There was also a little pink in her floral bedding, even if it was mostly some neutral brownish color.

When I think about my daughter’s early love of pink, I have to admit that I picked that color for her walls. And then there’s the catalogs.

When she was little, my daughter liked to read while she ate. It was the easiest way to keep her at the table. After ruining a few board books, we switched to magazines, disposable and constantly everywhere. She used to go through them and point, “Is this a girl? Is this a boy? This is a girl, right?” So, I blame Pottery Barn. But we also got a lot of hippie wooden toy, no faced doll kinds of catalogues, which may have had girls playing with trucks and boys in the toy kitchens, but the layout still told you: This is the girl section. This is the boy section.

So why was I so surprised when she was the first two-year-old in preschool to don the pink tutu and tiara?

My daughter asked me to spell out these words so she could write them.

A brief history of pink and gendered clothing for kids— It wasn’t until my parents’ generation (those baby boomers!) that children were raised in gender specific clothing. Before that, there was a long period of easy-to-bleach white baby dresses for both genders until age 6 or so. You can read more in this interesting piece from the Smithsonian (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/?no-ist). To quote the author, Jeanne Maglaty, around 1918, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”

That’s right—boys in pink, girls in blue. For many years, “appropriate” went back and forth from one color to the next. Frankly, I think it’s pretty bizarre to get so riled up over a single color. If we can agree that pink is lovely on certain roses and peonies, why is the color itself so awful?

Feminists have had a huge impact with their ideas about feminine dressing. Catherine Hepburn’s pants were scandalous! I agree, there is a freedom in wearing pants, a seriousness to gender neutral clothing for the business world. So thanks for that.

But somewhere things got a little out of hand and anything feminine, especially anything pink, became negative. Quick! Everyone! Go neutral! But what’s neutral? Over time, it’s come to mean that pink (and femininity) is lesser than, and gender neutral started living in boyland.

It's just a color!

Pink. Girly. How awful. Just as pink was once rejected for it’s very femininity, I feel the need to defend it and all things feminine. I think it’s time, my third wave friends, that we put on our lipstick, dress our daughters in frilly pink tutus and let them free. We have better washing machines now, and being in a dress no longer holds little girls back.

What about our boys? What happens when a boy puts on a pink dress? Or when their favorite color is purple? In some places, even today, it could be literally life-threatening. As long as pink is limited to girls, we limit our boys, too. Men in pink are only ok, the thinking seems to be, when they are wealthy men on vacation from their very.important.jobs. Their pink shirts say something like, “Look! I’m not working! Pink! I would never wear pink at the office! I’m so relaxed and chill!” If you’re wearing pink, you’d better be within a mile of a beach or golf course.

Melissa & Doug and other toy companies pandering to progressive parents tell us that girls can to anything. There’s a girl and a boy on the packaging of every dress-up outfit they make—engineer, surgeon, even firefighter. But nurse? ballerina? hair stylist? That packaging is all girls, every time. So, to translate: girls can do anything, but boys are limited to boy things, things they will later be paid more for later in life, not coincidentally.

It’s great that my generation was raised to believe that girls can do anything. I hope the next one realizes that boys can too. Even girly things, even if they’re not gay.

That’s our job, fellow mamas, to raise boys who can, if they want, wear pink.

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