Boys and Girls Pretty in Pink

The cute pink glittery side of a Toy Store filled with dolls and Barbies, play kitchens with plastic food, and bright pink toy vacuums and brooms; While the other side contains more red little cars and trucks, toy screwdrivers, and tough crime-fighting action figures on the other more blue side of the store. I remember all this walking through the toy store with my mom. I didn't think twice to rush over to all the baby dolls and everything pink. I mean I was a little five-year-old girl, it was only natural those were my preferred toys. My whole life I have unconsciously thought that girls needed to be "girly" and boys needed to be rough and tough. And once I started seeing people not follow these social norms, I labeled them as weird just because I couldn't define their gender and that confused me. But now I'm starting to see that you don't have to settle in your small stereotypical gender box. Colors, clothes, toys, and what have you, don't necessarily have to publicly stereotype you into a specific gender, it can be used to express yourself and how you feel.

 Many boys, as well as girls are gender variant, which the author, Melissa Bollow Temple, of the article "It's Okay to be Neither" defines it as "behavior or gender expression that does not comfort to dominant gender norms of male and female"(2). Or simply, boys who like to play and wear pink girly things and girls like being "tomboys." But it's viewed very differently among both genders. In males it's portrayed as breaking the social norm and that produces stares and snarls from society. As a little girl, I remember waiting for daddy to get home from work while I pretended to help mommy cook dinner in my plastic pink toy kitchen. I grew up in an environment which implicitly taught me what boys are "supposed" to do and what girls are "supposed" to do. When men don't follow the norms of their gender, they can be harassed because they're not "manly".  When I was in 3rd grade I recall joining in on picking on a little boy who liked to jump rope because to me it seemed silly that a boy would jump rope with the girls. It was most of the boys in the class that were picking on him by insulting him by saying "you're such a girl." As we see in the article "What's so Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?" by Ruth Padawer, a mother was quoted confirming, " I had enough life experience to know that the way we construct masculinity sets men up to either be victimized because they're wimps, or to be victimizers to prove their not."(qtd in padawer,8) Society has made it impossible for men to show the littlest bit of femininity without being ridiculed by others and some chose to hide it simply to avoid the nasty comments. And these are the risks gender-variant boys face when they take on this risk of expressing themselves with feminine things; It's exactly what most parents fear as well.

Parents are the most affected people in these nonconforming gender situations. First not only do they not understand why their child is this way they almost feel embarrassed by their son or daughter. This is only a natural subconscious emotion, because of the reason that gender stereotypes are burned into our minds at such a young age. When these social norms are challenged it makes us feel uncomfortable because we're not used to it. A father, in Padawer's article, doesn't understand why he is so "bothered" by his son wanting to wear a dress. (qtd in Padawer,2) That's just it, why does it bother us so much for a few rules to be bent... it's not like the world will end as a result. The biggest fear of any parent though, is their child being rejected for the way he/she choses to express himself. As put by a parent in Padawer's article, "The important thing was to teach him not to be ashamed of who he feels he is."(qtd,1) That's exactly how we need to treat this situation. Although 5 year-old me would have agreed boys do one thing and girls do another, I've changed my perception and we need to accept that these gender "norms" aren't obligatory, but an option for yourself to chose how you wish to be perceived. 

In girls, nonconforming gender is viewed differently, it isn't seen as such a big deal. So what if a five year old girl likes to wear a spiderman T-shirt or play with cars and dinosaurs? "That's because girls gain status by moving into "boy" space, while boys are tainted by the slightest whiff of femininity"(6) introduces Padawer. Boys are "supposed" to be tough, and when they challenge this by having a feminine side that's when they start to get insulted. Padawer surprises us when she bestows upon us this idea, "When a boy wants to act like a girl it subconsciously shakes our foundation, because why would someone want to be the lesser gender?"(6) We are uncontrollably taught that women are the lesser gender therefore it's alright if the little girl wants to dress like a boy because that is the higher level gender. I was brought up as a very pink girl, everything in my room was pink or purple and I played with nothing but Barbie's and I loved to wear dresses. I also had a little brother at the time, and where as I would get baby dolls, he would get little red toy cars and tough-fighting action figures. Without even knowing it my brother and I were slowly being conditioned into these stereotypical gender boxes. Another reason why I've started to feel that gender variance is a positive way to express how you feel and see yourself without restrictions from implied social norms.

If my brother were to wear my pink pouffy dress, that shouldn't identify him as a "she" maybe he just likes the color pink and doesn't want to be restricted to his gender specific colors. As a little boy explains to Padawer stated in the article, "He (a boy in his class who is a soccer fanatic) comes to school everyday in a soccer jersey and sweat pants, but that doesn't make him a professional soccer player." (qtd in Padawer,11) The mere fact that an eight year old boy can understand and accept this while we sit here and judge gender variant people simply because they don't accommodate to our perception of genders. This is why I now have changed my view on gender stereotypes because in reading these two articles and what I've personally experienced, I now realized that there's absolutely no harm in being gender variant.