For Lauca’s third birthday we had a lot of trouble finding her a bicycle. We just wanted a cute, sturdy BMX. We found bicycles were rigidly segregated into girls’ bikes and boys’ bikes with no possibility of overlap. The girls’ bikes were covered in tassels and either a) fairies, b) a chorus line of women in leotards and feathers (I’m not even kidding), or c) stars and sparkles.. and the boys’ bikes were covered in a) flames, or b) flames. And not muscle-car flames or volcanic flames or anything like that – just an ugly, angry mix of badly-laid out colours. What, I wondered, would you choose for a boy? On the plus side their bikes weren’t sexualised with a chorus line of high kicks, but they were ugly and unimaginative and worst of all, near identical, there was simply no choice offered in the boys’ range.
Why can’t boys wear pink? by Yvette Blackwood on ABC’s Unleashed series is definitely worth a read. There are so many interesting points raised in this piece about the way we view masculinity: essential, primary, instinctive, more valid than femininity, and yet simultaneously dreadfully vulnerable to being watered-down and over-powered.
My friend Mina lets her four-year-old boys wear fairy dresses.It probably wouldn’t be an issue if they didn’t wear them out of the house, but they do. And that’s where the trouble with gender begins. People assume these boys are girls, but those who engage Mina and her boys in conversation realise they have boys’ names, and then start to redden and get nervous, mutter things under their breath and walk away.
Mina’s grandmother has asked why the boys can’t dress up in cowboy outfits instead. Other little boys ask why they like pink. Another parent has suggested that Mina has transsexual children. The boys’ paediatrician has asked Mina if the boys like football, because they should start playing now and develop the common language for men.It’s a precious thing, this masculinity.It seems to be in danger at any moment of disappearing, so concerned adults seem to insist in little boys performing a certain kind of masculinity, restricting them from the ethereal world of the fairy, which, incidentally, was originally an imaginary world where these creatures were gender-neutral. We know deep at the heart of Mina’s grandmother’s and paediatrician’s concerns about the twins is that they may grow up to be, God forbid, gay.
The extreme way we role-play gender for little children says a lot about our views on gender and little about children.
The result is that little boys are stuck in a straight world of the most aggressive parts of reality – guns, pirates and cowboys – and girls are encouraged to explore both this and the more ethereal elements of imagination. Simply put, strict gendered behaviour whittles away so many aspects of what it is to be human.
blue milk 
That’s pretty much why I lust after one of these for the lad:
http://www.wooden.net.au
I agree… raising boys who aren’t hypermasculine is a greater challenge than raising girls who aren’t hyperfeminine, at least as far as societal acceptance goes. But it is empowering for girls to blur gender lines while men who do so are giving up power, so it’s hard to compare the two.
Secretly, I am terrified to have a boy. Not that I wouldn’t love a son, I don’t care what I have… but I feel like it will be so much more challenging to find non-alpha male role models for my son whereas I can find female athletes, politicians, doctors etc for my girls to look up to around every corner.
Of course, that’s just one issue. I likely won’t have to worry about my son being raped as a young man, so I guess it’s just a different sort of difficulty.
My youngest was always dressing in his sister’s fairy and princess dress-ups when he was little. In fact I’m pretty sure the only reason he stopped was because he grew out of them. There was many a time when the older two were greeted at the school gate by Tom as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White or (this is my favourite) Wonder Woman. On the days when he wasn’t wearing a costume other parents would express a kind of disappointed surprise. I did insist (mostly – one doesn’t win every argument!) on no dress-ups at the shops or when going out in public spaces – but that applied to all the kids not just my princess boy 🙂
my sister and I used to dress my brother up in dresses all the time
I was looking at bikes–for two boys–for last Christmas thinking the same thing–bikes? bikes??? Give me a break. All of these forces out there trying to cram these little, wonderful, complex children–and even babies–into tiny little “acceptable gender behavior” boxes makes me want to beat my head against a wall.
We have a tricycle made by Kettler and I am hoping to get the 12″ bicycle soon. They make their bicycles and tricycles beautifully appropriate for any child with color combinations like turquoise and orange or blue and red. Would you be able to find a Kettler dealer in Australia?
My younger son has always loved dressing up as a fairy. Last year, to a four year old birthday party, he wore a santa hat and fairy wings. This year, he’s decided to go as a pirate. I’m not sure if he’s grown out of the fairy thing, or whether starting school has made him conscious of gender, or whether he’s just going through a pirate phase now.
It’s hard with boys, to work out where to encourage them, and where to hold them back knowing they will be teased by their peers. We’ve discouraged (subtly) pink and fairy stuff to school, having watched some of the kids in the playground.
My eldest’s favourite colour is pink, but his father wouldn’t let him have a pink bike. We found a blue one that looks pretty cool, but I was hoping for purple or red – they just didn’t exist in the type we wanted.
He used to dress up as a ballerina at pre-school, but won’t do it anymore (he’s at school now).
There are so many restrictions on boys, and it is still socially acceptable to tease boys for violating gender roles. There was a plan of action when the girls at his school were pushing each other to wear dresses instead of shorts. But I know there is a massive number of gender rules for boys that are not addressed.
I was feeling pretty smug about not having to face the princess issue (which is like a goddamn PLAGUE ON THIS EARTH – it is EVERYWHERE) and I feel like there really are a lot of multicolor/primary-color options for the really little kids stuff – but I am not looking forward to the aggression/pain-based masculinization training the marketers have in store for my son. Ugh. A bridge to cross when we come to it.
However, I have a question for you all. There is a television cartoon program that my early-toddler son likes. It’s a reading program aimed at very young children, with a lot of focus on individual letters and spelling out simple words. The boy characters seem fine – dress like normal kids, act like normal 4-5 year olds. There are two girl characters. One girl behaves like a normal 4-5 year old but is dressed in a very short red skirt – it’s obviously fine on her as a cartoon, but contrasts markedly with the boys normal play clothes (overalls and jeans). The other girl is a princess who giggles and bats her eyelashes whenever she speaks to the audience. Even though this is a good program otherwise, this totally drives me insane and if I had a little girl I don’t think I’d let her watch it pretty much just because of that. However, I’m not sure whether this is as much of an issue if it’s a young boy watching it. What do you think?
I suspect it is a bigger issue with boys than girls. You can address the concepts directly with a girl, whereas it just seems to slide its way insidiously into a boy’s psyche. It’s not so hard to explain to a girl that she is not defined by what she sees on TV (up to a point) but the concept that girls are not like what you see on TV has an extra level of abstraction for a boy (not him directly) which makes it harder.
I really don’t want to raise sons that have deep seated, subconscious images of girls in short skirts and giggling inanely. So after all that, I suspect I haven’t done enough to actually achieve that. I am aware that there isn’t much point raising a daughter who doesn’t subscribe to that nonsense if I am raising boys who do. I do try to offset it with conversation and my own behaviour though.
I think I’ve seen that show that Emily mentioned–or one extremely similar. I can’t think of what it’s called–but is that short skirt girl on roller skates?
Anyway, my opinion is if it’s a poor depiction of gender for girls, it’s no good for boys, and vice versa. If I wouldn’t want a hypothetical daughter to see it, I definitely don’t want my two little boys to see it either. And fabulous female characters/role models are as extremely important for my boys as great male role models. I’m as adamant about it as I can be.
I was going to suggest the Kettler trikes/bikes as well for their primary-colors and gender neutrality.
With a small boy of my own, I worry greatly about my ability to allow him the space to explore gendered games, clothing and behaviors without impeding (mostly) his social safety and happiness.
No matter what I’ve done in our home, the messages from media and the other children (daycare and school) have settled strongly into my boys’ experimentation with identity; especially with the absence of a male role model at home. We have removed virtually all kids’ TV shows from our tele time, and watch docos/science/wildlife shows instead. I won’t limit them mixing with other kids, so instead we talk about the social messages they pick up.
I too wonder what understanding of women they will form when all the little girls around them are princesses. They’ve noted that I don’t wear pink or dresses, and that I use power tools and fix things in our house, so I’m hoping that along with the chats, laughter and loving affection we share, they will know that women aren’t necessarily pink, sparkly or manipulative. That women just are.
I wonder if their own sense of identity is tied in with their understanding of women; that if they can love and trust women as friends, they will be able to become themselves more freely. They do have flame covered bikes (ick), and model violent behaviour that makes my skin crawl. But we have enough creative, imaginative play and general sharing of our family’s home work to let me think that maybe we will make it to the other side. They both love books and I hold onto that as another thing that may open other worlds and carry them through the cultural garbage soup.
Marjorie – the short-skirted girl IS on rollerskates, and the combination, unfortunately, makes me think of the Heather Graham character in that Mark Wahlberg movie about the 1970s porn business.
I really feel like I’m tilting at windmills here, and I imagine that it’s just going to get more difficult the older he gets. (I think I’ve seen two PBS children’s shows, in total, which don’t carry problematic gender messages. They get around the issue by making animal puppets their only characters.) I think Em and Ariane are right to note that instilling a critical perspective on popular culture is an important technique for combating some of the subliminal aspects of social gendering. Good luck to us all!
Tilting at windmills? That’s something I’m good at. LOL.
*does the happy dance at the thought of blue milk posts on boys*
Radical mama, I too was terrified of having a son – so of course I gave birth to a little boy in May. He’s 12 weeks old today – and already the gender stereotyping has begun. At some point in the past 25 years purple became a “girl colour”, and people get horribly confused when me or his daddy take him out in his purple wrap. The nurse who vaccinated him told us “boys always scream, the wusses”, the neighbour said “boys take longer to sleep through the night, they’re more active” and at 3 months it’s proving more than a little difficult to find nice outfits that aren’t blue, brown, black/grey or green (which is now apparently a ‘boy colour’. So long as it’s not pastel).
I’m fairly sure he’ll get plenty of interesting boy rolemodels in kids’ books at school, so have invested in several featuring active, clever girls – and am trying to find some good stories about creative, emotional boys to balance things out.
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