I was recently perusing a catalog for a Scholastic book order. When I was a teacher, I gave them out half-heartedly. On the one hand, they enabled some students to get books at a very low cost, they encouraged reading, and they also helped me to build my classroom library. On the other hand, I found the offerings to be quite limited, much of the “literature” to be of poor quality, and too often the books came with chintzy toys and the toys seemed to sometimes have more draw than the books themselves. All that being said, I do not think the idea itself is a bad one.
Fast forward to a few days ago. I was looking over the flyer online as I thought I might want to buy a book or two via an online buying option. After just a moment, I knew there were no books that I wanted to add to the library. But as I looked at the flyer, I was more struck by the options that were available. Most blaring was the section “For Girls.” (You can find an example if you look at a flyer here.)
I do not deny that there are books that tend to be better liked by boys and those that tend to be better liked by girls. But the operative word here is tend. There are no books, save perhaps those on particular developmental or biological topics, that are really only for girls (or boys, for that matter).
More troubling, however, is the idea that a boy might get when he looks at the flyer. Let’s pretend he’s perusing the flyer and finds a book or two he likes. One happens to have a girl as the main character. And the cover happens to be pink. His eyes travels up and he sees the header for that section of the flyer: “For girls.” What’s the boy to think? Is he not allowed to read that book? Is he not allowed to be interested in the book? If he is interested in it, what does that say about him? Worse yet, if he likes it, what does that say about him? The messages of exclusion, of narrow gender roles and gendered options are insipid. And their effects troubling. Yet most of us probably don’t even give that little header on the flyer a second thought. Troubling….
Gendered Options
ouch :/
As an in-betweenly gendered adult, examples like these glare at me everywhere, but it seems like they are lost on so many people. I’ve been reading for a few months & love your blog. As for the gendered toys, one of my favorite stories is:
I was a toddler & found my dad’s old army truck toys. My parents saw me and noted to each other how good it was that I was not constrained to playing with only girl toys. Upon closer inspection, it turned out I was separating them into families: Mommy Tanks, Daddy Tanks & Baby Tanks!
I hope the world is big enough for Q to find more chances to be himself in his toys & books & clothing.
I know, too, that the world can be small. While I liked my “correct gender” princess dress growing up, I also had a favorite camo baseball cap. One of my earliest memories was wearing the cap on a playground when a kid asked me if I was a boy or a girl. After that the cap stayed hidden in a corner of my closet for years & years, but I never wore it out again.
At the least, some of us Big Kids are forming communities and starting projects like this one I found recently & love & am trying to spread the word about:
safe2pee.org
It’s all user-supplied info, so feel free to contribute!
Cheers & g’luck
Benji
Our six year old started grade one this year, and immediately started talking longingly of all things Hann*h M***ana. One day I asked her who that was, and why she liked her. Her response… ‘I dunno.’ Oh, peer pressure, here we come…
I echo your concerns about Scholastic. This is not how I remember those forms from my childhood, but maybe they were like that then, too. From the standpoint of raising a girly tomboy, I’m not okay having ‘sexay’ older teen stuff marketed at her. We’ve told her that anything with a picture of a grown-up on it is not suitable until she is one, which nicely does away with all those horrible, horribly written Barbie stories too).
The funny thing is that, while she’s drawn by the sparkly things and unicorn and fairy stories in theory, the reality is that what really floats her boat once the stuff arrives are all the science-related books and stuff. “How your body works’, and books about planets, Magic Bus books, things like that. Last month she ordered a telescope and book-about-space set, and she adores it. She’s still seduced by the gender funnel on a daily basis. But we’ve already had an impact on some level, because when she went through her Scholastic book form this month, she muttered under her breath, ‘okay, I’ve got one girlie book, now I need the other kind too.’
It’s nice that your son is strong enough in himself to lead you in exploring his boundaries. We’re trying to walk the line between not denying our daughter the things she’s honestly drawn to, while still challenging the notions of what a girl is and what a boy is on a daily basis, as well as challenging the desires she’s expressing merely because her friends are expressing them. She met a butch friend of ours last week, which engendered a good discussion on girl/boy clothes, and haircuts, and why Holly would want to dress that way. We’re trying to get her to understand that if a girl wants to wear it, it’s girl clothing, and if a girl wants to do it, it’s a girl activity. But it’s hard, when we’re struggling against the societal weight that disagrees vehemently.