An innocent comment at the playground has plagued me for a few weeks.
A woman and I started a conversation as our kids – her son and my daughter – played together. As it turns out, they were both almost two at the time so the mom and I had a bit to chat about.
At one point, my daughter got off one piece of equipment and climbed another. The boy, anxious to follow, jumped from a high point to the ground, giving the mother and me a startle. The mom sighed, “He’s all boy – no fear of anything.”
I told her my daughter would have done the same thing if he had gotten down first. The mom seemed surprised and didn’t seem to believe me when I told her my daughter had climbed to the top of every playground set in the area, gone down the highest and twistiest slides, and gleefully ridden every amusement park ride she had come in contact with.
Then she said, “Well, that’s great. Good for her,” in a tone that was less supportive and more, “I don’t believe a girl would do that.”
I don’t think the comment was made maliciously. Judging from her bubble-gum-hued dressed older daughter, daintily climbing the steps while playing with her ponytail, I’m guessing the mom had never experienced a no-fear attitude with her daughter. And that’s fine.
I’m not about bashing the girly-girl persona, but rather questioning why so many still push our kids into boy and girl “boxes,” especially with somewhat lesser expectations of girls – even as young as two years old.
There are so many places across the world where girls are treated as lesser beings. They’re executed for going to school. They’re kidnapped from their families and sold into unfathomable situations. There are so many global atrocities that girls may have to face for no reason other than that they were born female.
We’re lucky to live in the US, where any girl, presumably, has a choice to make their life what they want. On the flip side, however, we live in a country where beauty is valued over brains, especially in women. We don’t have television shows dedicated to watching a red carpet to see how smart people are. We don’t have magazines dedicated to comparing the SAT scores of the elite.
No, we focus on the outside – the glitz and glam. We tend to idolize the men and women who fit into typical gender stereotypes and categorize those who don’t into groups of oddities. And people still wonder why so many pre-teen and teenage girls have such low self-esteem.
But there is a surge in “girl power” in the media. So many big-named companies have taken it upon themselves to help build the self-esteem of girls around the world (or at least in countries that get cable and the internet). Dove has a great commercial about unstoppable girl power.
