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agonyaunt2020-09-24 11:34 am
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2020-09-24 11:34 am
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Dear Care & Feeding: We're raising our child gender-neutral but she only wants pink dresses
Where did we mess up?
My husband and I have a frequent disagreement on our 3-year-old and her love for dresses and all things pink! For the first two years of her life, she was constantly mistaken for a boy because she wore gender-neutral clothes. We direct her towards books and other media that do not represent traditional gender roles (no sparkle princesses!). We ask friends and family to refrain from commenting on her appearance and clothing, if they can help it, and to instead focus on skills or interests. However, our daughter adores the color pink, insists on wearing dresses, and is currently obsessed with accessories. I am fine with this, though I hope it will be a phase.
After a few battles about wearing her sole pink dress when it was dirty, my daughter and I did some online shopping together and she chose a few more dresses to order (all of them were pink, obviously). My husband is unhappy that I encouraged her obsession by purchasing the dresses and letting her wear some of my old jewelry. He gets annoyed when dresses get tangled while climbing a rock or running and says that dresses and accessories aren’t suitable for doing most things. I appreciate his commitment to raising our daughter without gender stereotypes, but I also want to encourage her to make her own choices. I feel like if we push back too hard on her love for dresses and jewelry, it will backfire, and she will only become more obsessed! Help!
—Pretty Annoyed With Pink
Dear PAWP,
It often seems to be the case that eschewing “traditional gender norms” involves identifying things that are coded as girly or feminine as bad. The argument against “sparkle princesses” is typically that they teach girls to aspire to unrealistic standards of beauty, or promote the idea that they should be looking for Prince Charming to come save them. The same argument could be made for encouraging boys to climb rocks and run, while discouraging them from practicing nurturing with baby dolls and stuffed animals.
Pink, puffy dresses should not be the only option available to girls, nor should they be for girls exclusively. However, that doesn’t mean that something is inherently wrong with the garments themselves. Furthermore, I think you’re missing the blatant sexism in “dresses and accessories aren’t suitable for doing most things.” I wear dresses and accessories nearly every day, as do millions of people of varying gender identities across the globe; I assure you, we do “most things” with ease.
It seems to be that the goal for shielding a child from gendered clothing and activities would be to allow them to define their identity without having it assigned to them by their parents and society at large. But the “gender-neutral” clothing you have selected has led to your daughter being misgendered for a reason, and that’s because what we consider “neutral” in terms of gender often defaults to a masculine norm. “Boys clothes” are for everyone. “Girls clothes” are for girls. Additionally, there are many games and activities that can be played in dresses and even heels, so that these “girly” clothes are considered impractical suggests that the “gender-neutral” things you are choosing for your daughter to do may also fall along the lines of what would usually be labeled “boy stuff.” Is masculinity more neutral than femininity?
Also, you’re worried that trying to direct her away from pink princess dresses will only make her like them more, but what’s the big deal if she does? Are you of the opinion that tulle skirts are inextricable from a damsel-in-distress worldview? Is this just fear that your daughter will have starkly different interests from you guys? Patriarchy is the enemy. Misogyny. Discrimination. And while glittery dresses and baubles are used as tools of these systems at times, they are not themselves at the heart of what stands between your child and the sort of liberated existence you want for her. To free her from dress-wearing as an obligation is noble; to code dresses as some sort of deplorable relic of a time gone by is just out of step with reality.
Without saying it intentionally, it seems as though your version of gender-neutral is casting a negative light on traditional femininity as opposed to the ways of thinking that prescribe it as mandatory or inherent.
Go to Goodwill and get your daughter some ruffly, puffy dresses that she can wear as she climbs trees without worry over replacing something expensive if she gets them messed up. Trim the dress so it’s not too long, put some shorts under it for ease of mobility, and get her some sparkly sneakers so she can complete the look and run around safely. Talk to her about gender norms, and why it’s so important that she doesn’t buy into the myth of “girl stuff” and “boy stuff.” Surround her with images and stories of dynamic women of diverse backgrounds—including those who serve high femme looks in dresses and the ones who prefer suits and hard-bottomed shoes, and those who are just as likely to show up in either. To quote the singer india.arie, “It’s not what a woman wears, but what she knows.” Refocus this project. Good luck to you all.
My husband and I have a frequent disagreement on our 3-year-old and her love for dresses and all things pink! For the first two years of her life, she was constantly mistaken for a boy because she wore gender-neutral clothes. We direct her towards books and other media that do not represent traditional gender roles (no sparkle princesses!). We ask friends and family to refrain from commenting on her appearance and clothing, if they can help it, and to instead focus on skills or interests. However, our daughter adores the color pink, insists on wearing dresses, and is currently obsessed with accessories. I am fine with this, though I hope it will be a phase.
After a few battles about wearing her sole pink dress when it was dirty, my daughter and I did some online shopping together and she chose a few more dresses to order (all of them were pink, obviously). My husband is unhappy that I encouraged her obsession by purchasing the dresses and letting her wear some of my old jewelry. He gets annoyed when dresses get tangled while climbing a rock or running and says that dresses and accessories aren’t suitable for doing most things. I appreciate his commitment to raising our daughter without gender stereotypes, but I also want to encourage her to make her own choices. I feel like if we push back too hard on her love for dresses and jewelry, it will backfire, and she will only become more obsessed! Help!
—Pretty Annoyed With Pink
Dear PAWP,
It often seems to be the case that eschewing “traditional gender norms” involves identifying things that are coded as girly or feminine as bad. The argument against “sparkle princesses” is typically that they teach girls to aspire to unrealistic standards of beauty, or promote the idea that they should be looking for Prince Charming to come save them. The same argument could be made for encouraging boys to climb rocks and run, while discouraging them from practicing nurturing with baby dolls and stuffed animals.
Pink, puffy dresses should not be the only option available to girls, nor should they be for girls exclusively. However, that doesn’t mean that something is inherently wrong with the garments themselves. Furthermore, I think you’re missing the blatant sexism in “dresses and accessories aren’t suitable for doing most things.” I wear dresses and accessories nearly every day, as do millions of people of varying gender identities across the globe; I assure you, we do “most things” with ease.
It seems to be that the goal for shielding a child from gendered clothing and activities would be to allow them to define their identity without having it assigned to them by their parents and society at large. But the “gender-neutral” clothing you have selected has led to your daughter being misgendered for a reason, and that’s because what we consider “neutral” in terms of gender often defaults to a masculine norm. “Boys clothes” are for everyone. “Girls clothes” are for girls. Additionally, there are many games and activities that can be played in dresses and even heels, so that these “girly” clothes are considered impractical suggests that the “gender-neutral” things you are choosing for your daughter to do may also fall along the lines of what would usually be labeled “boy stuff.” Is masculinity more neutral than femininity?
Also, you’re worried that trying to direct her away from pink princess dresses will only make her like them more, but what’s the big deal if she does? Are you of the opinion that tulle skirts are inextricable from a damsel-in-distress worldview? Is this just fear that your daughter will have starkly different interests from you guys? Patriarchy is the enemy. Misogyny. Discrimination. And while glittery dresses and baubles are used as tools of these systems at times, they are not themselves at the heart of what stands between your child and the sort of liberated existence you want for her. To free her from dress-wearing as an obligation is noble; to code dresses as some sort of deplorable relic of a time gone by is just out of step with reality.
Without saying it intentionally, it seems as though your version of gender-neutral is casting a negative light on traditional femininity as opposed to the ways of thinking that prescribe it as mandatory or inherent.
Go to Goodwill and get your daughter some ruffly, puffy dresses that she can wear as she climbs trees without worry over replacing something expensive if she gets them messed up. Trim the dress so it’s not too long, put some shorts under it for ease of mobility, and get her some sparkly sneakers so she can complete the look and run around safely. Talk to her about gender norms, and why it’s so important that she doesn’t buy into the myth of “girl stuff” and “boy stuff.” Surround her with images and stories of dynamic women of diverse backgrounds—including those who serve high femme looks in dresses and the ones who prefer suits and hard-bottomed shoes, and those who are just as likely to show up in either. To quote the singer india.arie, “It’s not what a woman wears, but what she knows.” Refocus this project. Good luck to you all.
no subject
It's complicated, and I don't think it's that simple. I mean, yes, the parents are doing that thing where "gender neutral" is coded masculine, and "feminine = bad", and the thing where they're policing the kid's chosen expression of gender, and that sucks. But it's not simply a matter of turning that off. And gender neutrality (or the thing we are more wanting kids to have the option of, which is picking and choosing from an inclusive gender salad bar), isn't something either the parents or the kid will be able to control. The kid will get different societal feedback depending on whether she's girl-coded or not, and she'll make her decisions about how to present herself based on which feedback gives her the rewards she wants.
I don't know how the zoomers are going to wrangle this as they grow up.
I know I don't like how well meaning parents handled it in the 1970s, which was very much like LW -- feminine coded is bad, and gender neutrality means short hair and being mistaken for a boy (there's a reason I say my gender identity is "Leslie from Bridge to Terebithia). I guess Free to Be, You and Me tried to go full on 1970s genderqueer, but they were so timid about it, and pretty much stopped at "boys and cry and have dolls and bake cakes."
But I don't like the way the next generation of well-meaning parents handled it either (not speaking of individual parents here, but of parents and well-meaning society working in concert -- systemic, not individual, action). Girls can have trucks and tutus! And boys can have those things until they are old enough that they start getting negative feedback from everyone around them, at which point, if they're trans or gay we'll totally support them, and if they're straight... well, there's an awful lot of societal pressure against being a straight boy who likes tutus. You still end up with femininity being the set of traits that are non-masculine.
And the thing is, it's literally impossible for individual parents to craft a good set of choices to give their kid maximal freedom. The kid lives in a society and that will have influences on them. And parents of daughters don't have nearly as many opportunities to create the radical set of gender choices as parents of sons, because one (good!) side effect of the last 40 years of gender trouble is that girls have more options. Boys don't have nearly as many, though, still.
Zoomers are growing up in a world where there's a lot more options for boys to be straight and sparkly, or sparkle-phobic, or into glitter trucks, or into camo tututs. Three cheers for the gender salad bar! And in that world, parents can be less worried about the gender norms their kids subscribe to, seeing pink dressy truck-phobic girls as comfortable as any other choice.
But, like, I don't know where LW falls on the spectrum of fears -- and obviously their choices to circumscribe their daughter's gender expression are the wrong choices. But I remember when a lot the sex-positivity of the 90s turned into another way to shame women who weren't "GGG" (thanks for nothing, Dan Savage). For that matter, I was part of a generation of women who have ping ponged back and forth between women's careers (where we are paid worse and get less respect, or worse, can feel shame, because the 2nd wave feminists who taught us were aspiring to escape) and men's careers (where we hit a glass ceiling and also there's a constant expectation to present Girly Enough to be professional but not Too Girly to be respected). We all have a complex, and nobody knows how to escape, or what the right answer is. And parents are constantly told that every choice they make for their kids is wrong! It's no longer just "They fuck you up, your mum and dad", but now every choice parents make is Failing At Social Justice.
So yeah, LW is messing up, but I can see the fears it comes from. "If my kid is a sparkle princess, and then people around compliment her for being pretty, then she'll stop caring about being adventurous or smart or kind or hard working!" And depending on when LW was born, they, too, might have grown up in a time when the best way to fight gender norms was to assume that the ones coded for icky wimmins was the icky ones.