"I'm going to play devil's advocate for just a moment here [...] imagine for one second that you DO raise Scouty to have a strong sense of self and someone who stands up for herself and what she believes in (which you will)... but then one day she comes to you and wants to try out for cheerleading. What would you do? My SIL was SO opposed to the whole "princess" thing, and no pink, and no girly girly stuff, which I totally get... but she went SO overboard about it. And then guess what? My two nieces are the girliest little princesses you have ever met, because really that's just who they are... To me, being a good parent is about protecting your kids and accepting WHOEVER they are... and some kids just really DO want be cheerleaders or princesses."
First of all, I totally don't view this question as you playing devil's advocate. I think it's a really smart and fair question, and it's definitely something I've thought about and considered a lot. I started to answer it in the comments, but it became a post all of it's own, so I hope you don't mind me writing out the world's longest response in this public venue. Keep in mind that my girls are 4 and 1, and I have no idea what's going to happen as they grow up. All I can do is believe what I believe and stand up for it. Your question totally doesn't offend me, even a teensy little bit, so don't worry! I'm going to do my best to answer it, and if, after my answer, we disagree about this whole thing, I will totally respect and admire and accept you, anyway. It's really important to me that people know that we can disagree about things without it changing the way I feel about you, as a person. (I think it's the only way to survive in the world as a very opinionated person.)
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My daughters have a pink plastic princess kitchen. They have a little pink washer and dryer, tea party sets, countless princess dresses and tutus. Scouty will disappear upstairs and put glittery make up all over her face, and when she comes back downstairs, she has been transformed into a character she calls, Marvelous Girl, and she prances around the house being gentile and charming. (Actually, I think I have a cell phone picture of this, hold on.)She loves playing makeover, and has a gigantic collection of hair bows and accessories. She has a million adorable dresses and tons of pink clothing.
The point for me is that none of these things define who she is.
Right between her pink plastic kitchen and little pink washer and dryer, she has a black and decker mini work bench with battery operated power tools. She has a basketball hoop and an art easel. She has a shelf full of books and a tent. She has camouflage binoculars, bug catching supplies and a collection of robots. She calls her Monster Truck "Brave Digger" because she misunderstood when I read the words "Grave Digger" aloud, from his bumper. She has a Spiderman shirt and a Popeye shirt, and she wears them all the time. She has a wheelbarrow and gardening supplies. When we went to the store to pick out sandals yesterday, we perused both the "girl" and "boy" aisles, and she picked a pair that were blue and black, even though she was tempted by a pink pair with flowers. If she had picked the flower pair, I would have gotten them for her.
The point is not that I hate pink and discourage all tendencies in my children toward the girlie, flowery, domestic blissy. They are allowed to choose to play with whatever they want. Except sexy toys like Barbie and those hideous Bratz dolls... and all of the toys that are just like them. These toys tie into my objection to cheerleading, but more on that in a second.
Toys that are considered "girl" toys are all pink. They are. If you want to make a baseball glove for girls, just make it pink. There's nothing inherently wrong with the color pink, just like there's nothing wrong with orange or yellow or green. They'll all just colors. If you have a daughter who honestly, after being presented with all of the colors equally, (which is totally hard to do, in this world. No matter how hard you try to make things equal, your girls will still understand that they're supposed to identify with pink. It's just shoved down their throats everywhere they go.) But, if you did manage to present all colors equally and your girl simply has a preference for pink, then great. Pink is a great color, just like blue and brown and red and orange and purple. Who cares? It's just a color, when everything else is equal.
I don't believe though, that if you have a girl who has been presented with every option equally, she will just naturally choose to be a princess. She won't naturally choose to pretend to be fancy and wash clothes all the time, while the rest of kid world is dancing like crazy, digging up worms, learning acrobatics, playing ball, putting together puzzles, going down slides, jumping, running and throwing. Like I've said about my own Marvelous Girl they WILL totally choose to be a "girly girl" and a princess some of the time. But they won't be any more interested in being a princess than they will in being a kid. If your girl has an obsession that overrides her other interests, with all things pink and frilly and princessy, they have ingested a damaging message about gender.
My argument against cheerleading is similar, but it's not quite the same. I don't think that cheerleaders are obsessed with cheering, to the exclusion of other interests. Probably, for the girls who do it, it's not even about "cheering" for boys. It probably never occurs to them that they're acting out a role in a dangerous institution that is symptomatic of a sickness in our society. They are just being athletic and having fun participating in something that has existed since long before they were born, and has always been toted as being an in thing to do.
Just because it's not about being a part of a preternatural sex fantasy, or playing a role in women's failing objective to be classified as human beings, for the girls who are actually participating, or for the parents permitting their participation... doesn't mean that it's not those terrible, demeaning, oppressive, dangerous things to the rest of the world.
Like I said on facebook, after I wrote this post about Cheerleading, I saw in my statistics that somebody found my blog by searching the term, "cheerleader car wash teen p0rn bikini." Just because you're not purposefully allowing your daughter to be viewed by boys as something beneath them, or to be a sex fantasy for men lining up to have their cars washed by soaped up teenage girls so that they can google explicit material about it later, doesn't mean that it's not happening.
Just like, if my daughter wants pink sandals, I won't object... but if she wants one of those terrible Bratz Dolls, I will one hundred percent forbid it, if my teenage daughters really want to dress up in little skirts with visible, built in panties and jump around in front a group of boys, men and women who have all been conditioned to see my 16 year old daughters as sexualized beings, I won't allow it.
I understand that at 16 years old, I can't really STOP them from doing things, if it's what they really want. What I can do is live my life in a way where they're being fed positive information about gender, about being girls and women. I can make sure they understand why it's wrong to value women for being pretty, and men for being strong and capable. I can try to help them to be confident and amazed with themselves, so that they aren't as susceptible to negative input about what it means to be female.
Maybe I'm crazy, because the world is a pretty big place, but I'm going to argue that children who have been presented with all of the facts, who have been helped to understand why it is important not to succumb to the pressure to demean themselves, who have a sense of self-esteem that has been cultivated positively... don't believe that they are really just cheerleaders in their core. I know I can't compete with the influence of the world, once my girls are not under my constant surveillance, so, until then, I'll do everything I can to model something healthy and fair, and hope that in the long run, they'll choose what's best when they're counting on themselves to make their own decisions.
And if I'm wrong, and my girls want to be cheerleaders, I'll ask them to pay for it themselves, express my discomfort, examine where I failed, and support them and love them love them love them like crazy no matter what.
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I was thinking about this same comment. I've said before that Daughter will have to be a republican cheerleader in order to rebel. I know how I would handle almost every other situation, but I have no idea how I would handle her coming up to me and saying I want to be a cheerleader. I hope that I do an amazing job of raising her and teaching her to think critically about everything. I also hope that I raise 2 feminists (Daughter and Son) that see why cheerleading is not a sport. Ultimately though, if she wants to be a cheerleader, I think I'd do the same thing. Make her pay for it, voice all my objections (I'd probably make her research why cheerleading is good and bad), have her tell me why she really wants to do it and go from there.
ReplyDeletei think the part where you love them no matter what, yet will teach them how to have self-respect while expressing themselves and exploring who they are will very likely result in your girls becoming healthy, balanced teenage and adult women. however, it's also a very natural part of self-discovery to do some rebelling. i always joke with my fellow liberal friends about how their kids will rebel and become republicans. it's in jest, but i think there may be some truth to that. it makes sense that all kids come to a point and wonder, "what's it like to have a life opposite of what i've experienced so far?" but these phases are often just that - phases. sometimes we experiment and discover something totally wonderful which we were missing from our family's way of doing things, but when it comes to unhealthy behaviors, those are mostly things kids just have to try so they can see for themselves why parents have taught against it. so one year, one of your girls might want to be a cheerleader, but in the grand scheme of things, the lessons you teach them will stick, and they'll come back around to that.
ReplyDeleteAwww... I LOVE THIS POST!!! And it might even surprise you a little bit to know that there is not a single Barbie or Bratz doll in my house, never has been... I agree a million times over with pretty much everything you just wrote. I am probably not quite as opposed to the whole cheer thing for Dear Daughter, although fundamentally, I would much rather someone be cheering for HER than her cheering for them... in fact, I had that very conversation back when she was in about 3rd grade and MANY MANY of her friends were cheering for a local pee wee football team... they BEGGED her to join them (she could tumble like a mad woman even back then), but she would have had to quit soccer to do it... uh, NO THANK YOU. Made her SO mad that they wore their cheer uniforms to school on Fridays, so SHE organized her soccer friends to wear their soccer uniforms on Fridays. HOW MUCH DID I LOVE THAT?!?! You are a great mom, and made me smile that you called me a friend... and I am also NEVER offended by opposing opinions if I think they come from a place of thought and intellect (not much tolerance for stupid, however)...
ReplyDeleteOh, and I almost forgot. My son never had a single toy gun (you cannot imagine the flack I got for that from well-meaning but stupid friends) and he DID have a play kitchen, although finding one that was not solid pink and purple was nearly impossible. We did not allow him to play pee-wee football because around here it is run by a bunch of testosterone pumped freak dads trying to live out some unrealized fantasies of their own... we DID let him play in junior high when he asked, when it was coached by actual coaches. He played one year, had alot of fun, but decided ultimately it was not his thing and he would rather swim. My dad always thought it was funny that while he was in the middle of every play, he managed somehow to never actually get HIT... I told him it was because I raised a SMART boy. HA!
ReplyDeleteAs an older mom, all your responses to Amanda's blog are similiar to my beliefs..to a point.
ReplyDeleteI was a teen in the sixties and experienced the great changes that occurred in the seventies. I had a son who passed at a young age, and many years later had a new family.
My daughters are adults now themselves, and although I had probably every right to be a overly protective parent, I was not.
We offered the girls many options, and let them make many of their own choices, but they had to be responsible for the outcome of these choices.
They would choose their own friends, some choices were better than others, and they would choose their activities.
They were free to speak their minds with me, and there were times when I wasn't happy with what I was hearing but I never wanted them to close the door between us. They knew I might not like them some days but I would always love them.
If they weren't involved in a sport or consuming extracurricular activity, they were expected to find a part time job.
They have become responsible, loyal and tolerant young women, and yes they are feminists.
They do not suffer fools or whiners well.
I always felt the most important thing was that they were able to support themeselves in the fashion that they wanted to live, and that they were happy with theirs lives.
All that any parent should want is to see their children happy.
All the other things like dolls, or sports, or childhood indulgences are passing. It's how we deal with the big stuff that matters.
I do have a question for Amanda, what would the scenario have been if you had been with your family when the young man approached for the pitch? When he offered up a photo in lieu of a car wash? I know what I would have done, even if I would have just been a witness to the approach.
My mom was truly the best mother in the world, and i cant even imagine how I could do even half as good of a job as she did raising me. She grewvour food and made me organic yogurt from scratch. She did not allow me to have Barbie dolls, or any pink plastic toys. She taught me about feminism, and different religions, and why it was important to be nonjudgmental. She taught me about art, and literature, and music. She didnt wear makeup, and wouldn't let me until long past the years my friends first started wearing it.
ReplyDeleteAnd when I was 15, and told her I wanted to try out for cheerleading, she made me a good luck sign. When I made the team, she came to every single game. And after a season, when I decided it wasn't for me, she was equally as supportive of my decision to quit.
I'm not disagreeing one way or the other (and I'm typing on an ipad which I'm realizing is incredibly time consuming compared to a keyboard), but I wanted to share that story. I'm pretty sure I turned out okay, and I'm grateful to my mother for every choice she made.
xo,
melissa
Melissa, thank you for taking the time to share your story, even though you had to peck through it on your iPad!
ReplyDeleteI'm not personally exposed to stories like like yours very often. I think that you actually make me feel more open and more accepting of the idea, because I totally, totally agree that you turned out wonderfully.
I have HUGE philosophical objections to a lot of things, and I'm really adamant about the fact that people, especially parents should THINK about the choices they're making, and how they fit into society historically, sociologically and spiritually. I think that lots of times, I cling to these ideas without really considering the compassionate application of them.
I feel strongly about MY beliefs, and my beliefs are educated, thoughtful and developed with the best interest of everybody in mind. However, they're not very soft or supportive. If my girls, despite my efforts to allow them to see themselves as independent people, really just want to participate in cheerleading, I would be uncomfortable, and I would explain why. But, I would totally also be out there with a sign, loving them and supporting them in whatever they choose to do.
For me, it's not so much about the fact that they pick to do everything I think they should pick, as it is that they're presented with the truth about being women just as much as they're presented with all the negative lies society is bombarding them with constantly. In the end, if they choose to believe some lies and adopt what I consider to be negative stereotyping as part of their personalities, I promise to not stand in their way, or try to change them. They get to make their own choices. It's just my job to make sure their choices are informed by education and awareness as much as they're informed by pink and plastic and Hannah Montana, or whatever.
Anyway, yes. Thank you for commenting. I could have written another post in response to your comment! I could write about this stuff every day for forever, if I didn't think I would eventually bore and alienate everybody who's reading.
Just so you know, I appreciate you just as you are!
Kaws, I have thought about this! If I had been there with my family, I doubt the boy would have made the comment he did about selling a photo of the girl. But, if he did... I would have ignored him and look right at the little sixteen year old girl and said something like, "It isn't right that he's making these jokes about you. You're worth so much more than he says you are."
ReplyDelete