Stop Using Labels 2k16

We have all had our own experiences with labels. A few labels that have personally affected me have been the words “heavy,” “Jewish,” “short,” and “nerdy.” However, I never truly took the time to think about the way we label "girl" and "boy".

Orenstein writes on page 59 that both boys and girls “go gaga over the same toys: until they’re about a year old, they are equally attracted to dolls; and until they’re around three, they show the same interest in actual babies. In other words, regardless of how we dress them or decorate their rooms, when they are tiny, children do not know from pink and blue.”

I think this is pretty cool. If you think about it this way, it truly does not matter if your infant is a boy or a girl. Since all babies are interested in largely the same things, your experience with a child of either gender should be relatively the same.

It saddens me to think that the concept of labeling ruins this simplicity. According to Orenstein, “sometime between the ages of two and three” children “realize that there is this thing called ‘boy’ and this thing called ‘girl’ and something important differentiates them.”

I am a firm believer that people should do whatever makes them happy. If a boy likes Barbie’s, he should play with them. If a girl is into monster trucks, she should go for it. It seems cruel and unfair that society stops young kids from exploring what brings them joy.  In doing this, society stops imagination. These days, we need imagination more than ever. Perhaps if people stopped thinking in such small boxes, we would already have the cure for cancer, or be able to achieve world peace.

Labeling things so early can certainly create problems down the line. On page 64, Orenstein cites Lise Eliot as raising the point that babies are “born ready to absorb the sounds and grammar and intonation of any language, but then the brain wires itself up to only perceive and produce a specific language. After puberty, its’ possible to learn another language, but it’s far more difficult.” Do gender differences grow more powerful because we place labels on them so early in life? I think yes.

By labeling things so early, we force boys and girls into only one way of thinking. Yet, people who can think in more than one way tend to be more intelligent. If we want our children to grow up to become independent, brilliant, insightful members of society, we need to move away from labels and toward compassion, collaboration, and creativity.

Pink Pots and Preteens

I definitely needed a little humor to brighten my day this morning, seeing as all of my friends from home had today off but at Duke, classes were still in session. It was in reading chapter 3 of Orenstein’s book that I found the thing that made me chuckle:

“The Disney Princesses reigned over a new pink Royal Interactive Kitchen with accompanying pink Royal Appliances and pink Royal Pots and Pans set (though I would have thought one of the perks of monarchy would be that someone else did the cooking)” (33).

I guess I should preface this blog post by saying that I HATE cooking and cleaning. I would want to be a princess just for the sole reason of never having to cook or clean. But unfortunately, becoming a princess is not something I can bank on. I am going to have to cook and clean whether I like it or not.

Orenstein doesn’t really like the idea of all of these objects being pink. She says on page 34 that pink is “such a tiny slice of the rainbow, and, though it may celebrate girlhood in one way, it also repeatedly and firmly fuses girls’ identity to appearance.” I disagree with this claim.

I think it’s more than okay to have pink things. It’s a bright and beautiful color. It makes me happy to look at. I’d much rather wash pink dishes or use a pink plunger in my bathroom. The color itself makes doing a dreadful task somewhat easier. Why should we subject ourselves to having less enjoyment in our lives in order to make a statement about consumer feminism? Girls already have to do most of the housework (traditionally), so we might as well do it with beautiful appliances.

Another part of the chapter that I found to be quite interesting was the development of the “toddler” and “tween” phases. Both were coined as marketing contrivances in order to increase sales and segregate girls’ and boys’ clothing earlier. According to Orenstein on page 37, “Within ten years, it was considered a full-blown psychological, physical, and emotional phase.”

I thought that these phases had originated from science, marked by significant changes in the body. To find out that they originated as mere marketing techniques made me feel a bit stupid. I had been duped by the power of consumerism. However, so had the rest of the world. It always makes me feel better to know that other people got tricked like I did :) .

In my opinion, the moral of the story is not to underestimate the lengths that companies will go to in order to make a profit off of you. They literally invented stages of life and tricked us all!

What is your favorite Disney song?

As I was scrolling through my Snapchat feed while eating my brunch at the marketplace, I saw this list of the "Top 25 Disney Songs" created by IGN. They all are from animated movies (the best kind of movies). Personally, I love "Go the Distance" from Hercules. I was disappointed to see that it was number 25 on the list!

Also, if you are in the library like me on this beautiful Labor Day Weekend, check out this playlist to help you get your work done!

Exploring the Spectrum

The second chapter of Cinderella Ate My Daughter peaked my interest because of another reading assigned for class, called “How Changeable is Gender?” by Richard Friedman. On page 19, Orenstein is asking another parent why she supports princess culture. The other parent says, “I want my daughter to have a strong identity as a girl, as a woman, as a female…So if she wants to wear a princess dress and explore that side of herself, I don’t want to stand in the way.”

This mother may not be standing in the way of her child being a female, but what about the rest of the spectrum? In Friedman’s piece, he writes that gender is “a social construct and that people can move between genders to arrive at their true identity.” Gender dysphoria is very common in children. By shoving princesses down girl’s throats in order to make them feel like a female, are we in turn prohibiting them from exploring another side of themselves?

Our culture also discourages young kids from exploring different identities. On page 21, Orenstein tells the story of a seven-year-old boy who “was teased so ruthlessly about his new, beloved pink bike that within a week he refused to ride it.” We traumatize kids who are young and explore beyond social constructs of male and female. I bet this child has avoided pink for the rest of his life because one of his earliest memories is of him being bullied for owning and loving something of this color.

It is my opinion that children should use their childhood and adolescence to explore all of the identities in order to find the spot on the spectrum that makes them truly happy. It upset me to read on page 21 that “boys as young as four said their daddies would think it was ‘bad’ if they played with ‘girls’ toys, even something as innocuous as miniature dishes.”

If we just let our kids try everything and find themselves, rather than forcing them into little boxes labeled “male” and “female,” wouldn’t a whole host of other problems be solved? According to Friedman’s article, transsexuals have 19 times the rate of suicide. If we just accepted our kids from the start, I am sure this statistic would decrease.

Even if a child does play with toys that align more with another gender, it should not be a worry to the parent. In a study of 5 to 12-year-olds with gender dysphoria discussed in Friedman’s article, 70 percent of boys and 36 percent of girls were no longer gender dysphoric after a 10 year follow up, proving that for most children, it’s just exploration.

Exploration never hurt anyone. It leads to creativity and allows the imagination to exercise itself. Expectations of the varying genders should not stop something as wonderfully beautiful as that.