Gender Stereotyping: Too Cute To Be A Boy?

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook (wait, what? You don't, go do it now!) you would have seen me say:

"Today at the shops the bag-check woman fussed over Tricky then said "You're too cute to be a boy" - Gender stereotyping now at a Kmart near you!"

Most people assumed I was saying that he had been mistaken for a girl and I was upset. She knew he was a boy because she'd already asked his name (quite possibly to figure out that very fact). I don't care when he gets mistaken for a girl, it honestly doesn't bother me... it has happened a few times, even after people have asked his name, because it sounds very similar to a girl's name.

Now I won't lie, a little part of me immediately swells with pride because my genetic material is partly responsible for creating a child who has been deemed 'attractive'. I will use his cuteness as proof that there is good in me somewhere.

But the rest of me, a much larger portion, is a little sad that even at age one he can't escape gender stereotyping. Society is already telling him how he should look and how he should act in order to be a boy. It's a little tiny pigeon hole that potentially takes away a lot of great experiences for him.

A few people on Twitter realized what I was saying and joined in with stories of friends/strangers/family members saying annoying, gender stereotyping comments. The ones that made me cringe the most were hearing that Tattoo Mummy's boy should get a haircut because only girls have blonde curls, and  Cloud Love Baby who was told "with a squeal like that, he should've been a girl". Really? Boys don't have blonde curls? They can't squeal?

Well he is cute...

Map Guy and I were quite conscious of not buying gendered toys for Tricky, even though we knew he was a boy from his anatomy scan. We instead focused on bright coloured toys, blocks and books, LOTS OF BOOKS!

When he did receive a 'boy toy' car as a gift, I felt I should even it up a bit and brought out one of my dolls. He plays with them equally and I love it; making vroom vroom noises with the car then hugging his dolly. He is developing in to a sweet little boy who is rough and adventurous sometimes, coy and cuddly at others.

I'm not the first to talk about gender stereotyping, not by a long shot, but I hadn't yet experienced the effects of it myself until yesterday, and it just makes me more focussed on assuring that Tricky grows up to be who he wants to be, not who society tells him to be.

I will do everything in my power to make sure he has a balanced view on the world and doesn't learn that there are things just for boys or just for girls. At least not from me.

Do your kids have gender neutral toys? All toys?  Do you mind when they get mistaken for the opposite sex?

Mummy, where do babies come from?

This week at work I had a rather startling experience. When someone says “My job means I get to meet people from all walks of life” I wonder if they could actually meet as wide a selection as I get to meet at my place of employment. I'm a freelance makeup artist but for regular income I work in a pharmacy just outside the city, and you meet people not just from every walk of life, but every crawl, skip, hop and jump of life. Not a single day goes by there without some sort of interesting person popping in for a chat – we've had the usual pharmacy suspects – elderly, young parents, drug addicts etc, but because of our location we also tend to get a few “Perthonalities” from TV and football. It can get very hard not to stare at the footballer's legs while their waiting for their medication.

Most of the time they chat and even call me by name (I wear a name badge - it's not that they like me so much they remember me), we exchange pleasantries with more often than not them asking about Tricky while I pretend to not know who they are or what medications they take. Oh that's for impotence... wow!

But then you have those days when it's not the pseudo celebrities that are the highlight. Last week one of the 'regulars', Justine (not her real name) a lovely male to female transgender, came in. We normally chat about all sorts of things ranging from boring weather to the latest makeup trends. She's fantastic and bubbly, always brightening my day. But this time was different. Justine started asking me all sorts of questions about pregnancy. I didn't mind at all and started blabbering away, happy for someone who actually wanted to listen. However when the questions changed to include such gems as “How did you know you were pregnant? What symptoms should I look out for?” I nearly fell over. I didn't know how to reply!

I have absolutely no proof the Justine was delusional and asking for herself – she may have been asking on behalf of a friend or even a daughter. But that didn't matter, because in those few nanoseconds half of my brain seized up and decided not to do any more thinking. “How long did you have morning sickness for?” she asked me. I had it for around 13 weeks but do you think I could say that? With half a brain out of action all I could manage to say was “forever”. She laughed and waited for the real answer to come... it didn't. I was gobsmacked. A sudden influx of customers and I was too busy to finish our conversation – I've never been so relieved in my life!

I suppose it is better though than the intellectually disabled lady who in her own way of wishing me luck said to me at 25 weeks, “Gee, I hope you don't have a miscarriage”.

Don't Phunk With My Heart

Wow the first 20 weeks have gone by so fast! We're half way already!

Anyone who has had a baby will know that between 18-20 weeks you have a 'foetal anatomy scan' which, as the name suggests, examines the baby's major structures to look for defects. They check out everything from the brain through to the arteries that supply the kidneys. They can also determine the sex at this scan... but that wasn't the thing occupying my mind.

I am the baby of the family and my sister Penny is the eldest... but for about 18 months in the early 1980's there was a middle child. Jo-Anne was our other sister and she was born with a hole in heart. I don't remember her, I was too little, but we have some lovely photos of the three of us to remind us she was with us for a short while. My family has a morbid sense of humour at the best of times, but when the topic turns to illness or death, it brings out the worst of the jokes, hence my mum always says that she had a rainbow family (way before Angelina Jolie made it cool) because Penny was normal, Jo-Anne was sick and I was jaundiced so she had a pink baby, a blue baby and a yellow baby!

So going for the scan this morning, the foremost thought in my head was concerning Tricky's heart, and if they would be able to detect any abnormalities. Knowing the family history, we were sent to a specialist antenatal sonographer and she spent about one third of the whole visit concentrating on the heart... and I'm happy to say it looks good! The technology today, a full 30 year's after Jo-Anne's birth, is so much more advanced that if Tricky does have a minor hole that was unable to be seen on the ultrasound (a very minor possibility), chances are good that it would be able to be fixed *Insert sigh of relief here*.

So with no phunking of the heart, there were other things that we wanted to know... like the sex of the baby! The sonographer asked us before she started if we wanted to know and we excitedly said that we did. She looked relieved and said “Phew, sometimes it's hard for me to hide the important parts” as if by some miracle Hubby and I could decipher the blobs on the screen. I can see head, legs, arms and a spine... that's about it. I'm still not convinced it's not an alien by the looks of it. So on goes the warmed up goo (ooh that's so much nicer than the stone cold stuff they sometimes use), the hand held part is placed on my tummy and within about three seconds... “It's a boy!”


The relief I felt is hard to describe. I wouldn't have minded either way, but I'd already started calling Tricky a 'he' and planning in my head for a boy. Even on my Christmas card from Hubby he wrote “from your (current) boys” because he was including our dog. What would I have done if it was a girl? The night before the thought of a baby girl had actually kept me awake for a while. I'm sure it would have only taken minutes to adjust... no, really I'm sure... well I guess I don't have to worry. Unless the sonographer got it wrong? Oh dear.

Baby Naming 101

Without knowing the sex of the baby, Hubby and I are compiling a very long list of possible baby names that changes on an hourly basis. I have visions of our child's crib at the hospital reading “BABY GLOW-LESS” because we still haven't come to a decision.

My problem is I really like the names in the 'top twenty'. The top boys name, Jack, is a lovely name but doesn't really go with our surname so I'll use it as an example. The likelihood of there being at least two or three other Jack's in his school class is high, so he would always be referred to as Jack F or (lets be honest, we're talking about children who are especially skilled at being mean) Smelly Jack or Lanky Jack. Will I burden my child with a Smelly Jack moniker?

As I grew up I was the only one with my name (Glow-less being quite unique), so whilst I didn't have to share it with anyone and be defined by my surname or a trait, I did have trouble with always having to spell my name to people (hyphens make it difficult). It was so hard to get anything with my name on it; sticker books, those little number plates for your bike – I wanted them so much! To this day I still look through the racks of items to see if I'm there, and get a little thrill and the urge to buy it if I find it - the Holy Grail of a personalised pen or toothbrush.

I'm not sure if today's kids are going to find it hard to get their pen's and toothbrushes personalised or not. Maybe the industry will grow with the increasingly weirder names that are coming out? Maybe poor Jack won't get anything with his name on it because all the J's will be Jordan, Jayden, Jackson, Jakson and Jaxson?

It seems today if you're name isn't weird, then you're destined to be a normal, boring person. Parents are naming their children after the rich and famous with the hopes their spawn will follow in it's namesake's Chinese Theatre footprints. And lets not forget the celebrities' poor children, currently assaulted by the “come up with the weirdest sounding name possible that will haunt your child until it's old enough to get it legally changed” trend. Some of my favourite (that is, the worst) of just this past year include:

Boys

Sophocles Iraia - Jermaine Clement & Mirandda Manasiadis

Bronx Mowgli - Pete Wentz & Ashlee Simpson

Atlas - James Tupper & Anne Heche

Sparrow James - Joel Madden & Nicole Richie

Girls

Petal Blossom Rainbow - Jamie & Jools Oliver

Mars Merkaba - Jay Electronica & Erykah Badu

Seraphina Rose - Ben Affleck & Jennifer Garner

Jagger Joseph Blue - Jason Goldberg & Soleil Moon Frye

Mind you, with some of those parents' names, I suppose naming your child something strange might be genetic.

Gender Bender

According to a highly scientific gender prediction quiz on www.childbirth.org I have an 82% chance of having a girl.

The quiz is made up of 23 old wives' tales including such gems as “A baby girl steals her mothers' looks” (which would explain the lack of Glow) as well as some I'd never heard of before like “If you pick up a mug by its handle you'll have a boy, pick it up by the body of the mug, you'll have a girl.” I went and picked up a mug to check and I pick it up from the rim – does this mean I'll have an intersex baby?

Its the question I get asked on a daily basis (the gender, not if it'll be intersex). People want to know two things; when I'm due, and if its a boy or a girl. At the moment I'm still two long weeks away from being able to tell, but my answer of “its too early” is met with “are you going to find out?” This is the bit I'm struggling with. The thing is I can't decide if I want to know or not. I'm the type of person who has to know everything, and I hate surprises (birthdays and Christmas bring a mixture of emotions for me) but I'm seriously toying with the idea of not finding out.

I'd like to think knowing wouldn't affect the way I decorate the nursery or dictate the colour of the jumpsuits I buy. Gender-neutral is becoming a buzz word in this household because of my belief that a child should be able to grow up in to the adult it was meant to be, not what society forced on it. And yes, I know painting walls pink or blue has almost nothing to do with the adult psyche, but it has to start somewhere! So by not knowing I'm forced to stay gender neutral and I'll be less likely to be swayed by the 'adorable frilly dress' or 'oh so cute sailor outfit' (do they actually exist?).

I've already started referring to Tricky as a he, purely for ease of conversation, and I'm afraid if I have a girl, for the first three months I'll refer to her as he, just through force of habit.