Boys and Girls
One of the earliest photographs of me features me playing with a bunch of building blocks. That was my childhood – playing meant building blocks, jeeps and, cooking sets. Sure, there were plenty of dolls and soft toys in my home, some bought for me by my parents, some people gave as presents. As a child, while I found them cute or pretty, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what I was supposed to do with them and so they were often ignored. There was this particularly creepy doll which had those eyes that could “blink”. It scared the living hell out of me, so I shoved it into the shoe cupboard. Because you know, if it was stuffed in a shoe cupboard, it can’t crawl out and get me. Kid logic. Watching TV meant Power Rangers, Scooby Doo, Batman and The Flintstones. I read Nancy Drew, A-Z mysteries, Sweet Valley High, and non-fiction books about ancient civilisations, dinosaurs, the earth, and space. Sherlock Holmes was my favourite superhero. None of this was fed or taught to me or. I picked what I wanted to play, what I wanted to read and what I wanted to watch. And as long as my parents didn’t find them too objectionable, they let me do what I wanted. In fact, when I recently asked my mum why she let me play with building blocks when they are considered “boys’ toys”, my mum was completely confused and asked me “It’s a boy’s toy? Why? I bought it for you because I thought it would improve your dexterity!” My mum, the lady from the village, a place many of us associate with gender stereotypes.
To me, this was all natural. It wasn’t until I started spending time in school and society where I was constantly told this wasn’t how I was supposed to be acting. In school, girls played hopscotch during recess while the boys played a world domination game that involved erasers that had the different country’s flags on them. I so badly wanted to be part of that game but trying to join them was always met with “You’re a girl. Go play with the girls” and a sneer. I didn’t get it. It wasn’t until the end of Primary 5 (10/11 years old) that I finally managed to weasel my way in (If you’re curious, my home base was India, and I managed to invade the UK. I did not know how IRONIC this was back then). We once had some sort of fair in school and I picked up a Pokémon comic book that received a unanimous “eww” from my girlfriends. I didn’t get what was so disgusting about a Pokémon comic book. By this time, my sister was old enough to sit up and play with toys. I watched her braid dolls’ hairs, hold little tea parties and talk to them. And it was the first time in my life that I wondered if I wasn’t acting according to my gender and if that was unnatural.
And it was with this confusion that I went to an all-girls secondary school. It was interesting and confusing. While I saw girls who acted and behaved like me, we were constantly told by teachers not to be that way. And I had been raised to respect authority and not ask any questions. But I just couldn’t agree with some of the things – like the time this teacher gave this long spiel about how boys should be the ones carrying tissues not girls so that boys can offer the tissues when girls cry. I kept quiet in class but I was so annoyed. First of all, I’m self-sufficient, I bring what I need. I also couldn’t help but wonder about the kind of women he interacted with that they were constantly bawling their eyes out and in dire need of tissues.
This gender thing only exacerbated the older I got – through my time in junior college, university and my jobs where it was predominantly women, my gender was increasingly pointed out to me and I was told to act my gender. How you ask? By the way I laughed (it was too loud and open-mouthed), by the way I would refute someone in an argument (I had to be “polite”), by the way I talked (too animated and attention seeking), by the way I dressed (jeans and t-shirts weren’t doing me any favours), by the way I walked (I looked “too confident”), by the music I listened to (did I really have to listen to Kanye?) and pretty much the way I existed. Another thing I started to hear more and more was to act my gender so that I can attract a boyfriend or husband. *YAWN.
These constant accusations of not being “girly” enough in fact only drove me in the opposite direction. It made me fight to prove that I’m more boyish than girlish. I used sporty things in school like Adidas bags (which is ironic considering I didn’t play any sport at any point in my life in school), I wore “masculine” watches, and I walked around with an “I’m-tough-come-at-me” attitude. I don’t even know who I was demonstrating the rebellion for. When my femininity, or rather, the lack thereof, was constantly pointed out to me, all I could wonder was “Is everyone constantly aware of their gender? Am I the only who doesn’t pay any attention to it?”
Looking back, I’m kind of frustrated with myself and society. I wish I had known it was normal the way I was acting. I don't even see all these as a gender equality thing, I see this as a limitation of a kid's experience. As a woman who’s 3 years shy of turning 30, I can say I love makeup as much as I love tech gadgets. I love chick flicks as much as I love action. And while I know next to nothing about cars, I can defend myself verbally and physically, take a stand and say “no”. I also suddenly found the colour pink, which I had hated all my life, to be pretty when I turned 20. Kids eventually grow up into who they are meant to be.
So, let your niece play with the fire trucks. Let your son wear the floral onesie. Let your child do as they please so that they can have their own experiences and lessons from it all. Don’t fit them in a box. They will turn out to be fine. I went the “non-traditional” route and I think I’m a pretty well-adjusted adult. Or as well-adjusted as most of us pretend to be. All you have to teach children is the values that they will make them good people, not about whether they should be playing with Barbies or building blocks.
And on that note, does that chocolate egg REALLY have to be gendered?
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