Of girlie girls and macho men

“Mom, are you a girlie-girl?” my eight-year-old questioned as I tucked her in a few nights ago. I wondered how these questions always crop up at bedtime – just as I was ready to switch off my brain and do some mindless television watching. “Umm.. I’m probably somewhere in the middle,” I replied. “Really?” she seemed surprised, “How come Mom?” “Well…I guess I do like some girlie things like shoes and clothes and I do enjoy a certain amount of style when possible.”

“I don’t think so” came her verdict quick and cruel. And with her words came crashing any delusion I may have ever held of being elegant.

“You don’t wear all that make up stuff – like on your cheeks and all over your face,” she continued. Ah…So that’s was what I needed to go back to doing to get the stylish status. “I don’t think you’re a girlie-girl” she decided. Part amused, part heartbroken, I imagined my bruised ego was ready for the ice-cream tub downstairs. “Well, I never want to be a girlie-girl and you aren’t one either,” she declared. So that’s where this was coming from and I was quite happy that she wanted us to belong to the same camp.

“Would you hold a frog in your hand?” “No,” I answered definitively. “Would you lick a slug?” Same answer. More yikes.  Maybe my girlie-girl and style status would be resurrected after all.

“Would you splash about in a river?” “Totally,” I replied. “Would you do it if there was all this mud and you were getting muddy?” Same answer. More laughter.

“Would you be upset if your shoes got all yucky or I know I know – if you had to step in cow poop covered ground and were barefoot?” “Wouldn’t love it but…" “See you could be all messy and stuff and not be like ‘oh no my clothes are dirty, my hair is yucky’. See you’re not a girly girl,” she announced.

She was making a point. I was getting the point. She was pointing out that I would never let any “girlie-girlness” come in the way of an experience or fun. I wondered too why I thought I was a girlie-girl. Could it be because I chose dance over sports? Because I could be concerned as to how I looked at least every now and then? I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I let it go.  

The conversation had been funny despite my dashed hopes at elegance. “You can be bit of both, you know. And there may be times when you want to do girlie-girl things, and that’s okay too” I told her. I changed the topic for I wanted her to sleep. I later wished I hadn’t ended it so brusquely. For I wondered where and how these stereotypes came from. Girlie-girl, tomboy, macho… And do kids and young adults feel the need to conform to the placed label? Or is it a dynamic of peer pressure?

Do we really want our children to believe that they need to belong to any one category; be part of a herd... are they cattle? Maybe they never will feel so and this discussion is moot.

In the meantime, I'll just stick with my tub of ice-cream till my bruised ego is healed and my images of elegance are upright again…sigh…