Out on a walk the other day, at dusk, I ran into a high school classmate I hadn’t seen in a long long time. She was in her front yard and was trying to get her little daughter inside to go to bed when I recognized her. We caught up a bit, cramming over a decade into those short jumbled sentences that jam the density of life into a few hurried tidbits.
Meanwhile a very tired little girl was attempting to prove that the day was not to end before its time.
Recognizing that the Mom wanted her little girl to scurry up to bed and get some pajamas on, I helped along the effort with the usual tricks of helping kids get excited about getting jammies on.
So I asked the little girl who was smiling, “What do have on your jammies?”
The girl then stared at me blankly as if I were speaking a cryptic Siberian dialect.
So I asked a different way, “Do you have pictures on your jammies?”
The little girl stared at me again with a blank stupor.
The Mom then clarified for me, “We don’t have pictures on our jammies. We wear gender neutral jammies.”
That’s when I did one of those head nodding, “ooooooh. . . . . . Huh.”
I didn’t even try to run with that one. I had a little girl in front of me that never heard of having butterflies, hearts, teddy bears, bunnies, ballerina’s, princesses– you know, cute pretty things – on her jammies.
The mom explained further that she had bought her little girl a mixture of toys, both trucks and dolls. “But you know, she went right for the dolls. Go figure.”
Yea. Go figure. She’s a girl.
So I said, “We’re kind of wired that way.”
The mom explained, “But I want her to be a scientist.”
Meanwhile, I was thinking to myself, I can’t remember running towards garbage trucks with enthusiasm as a little girl. But my nephews do. And they love the trucks on their jammies. They point out to me every single truck on their jammies.
I explained one of the world's most simple truths, “Girls can be scientists and still wear pink skirts.”
Ok to all you mama’s out there. If you got one of those wacked out gender neutral strategies where the focal point is pajamas. Good luck with that.
I know those man-hating feminists will scream and holler on this. But I can speak with authority on this. I dressed up in tutus, poofy pink skirts, played house, put flowers in my hair, played with Barbies. I took dance classes. I loved my leotards. I did gymnastics, danced to music, did hundreds of cartwheels and twirled in skirts. I painted my room yellow. I wore pink lip gloss. And that was just yesterday.
I also spent evenings in high school, at my Grandma and Grandpa's house, eating Grandma's homemade cookies while doing calculus and geometry proofs with my Grandpa. We’d sit at the little kitchen table for hours deriving the theorems of calculus. He was my inspiration for the math I pursued later.
And I still like pretty little lacy jammies.
Although it's great when Bob the Builder asks me out on a date, I don’t want pictures of his trucks on my jammies. I’ll leave that to the men who wear their carharts to bed.
So to all you mama’s out there. Let your child, especially your little ones, begin discovering their interests, to explore and relish things they love, to be who they are intended to be. Recognize their talents. Let them adore the beautiful things on this planet. Or relish the loud rumbling things like trucks. Don’t be disappointed if your smorgasbord of trucks and trains isn't welcomed by a four year old girl who would prefer to relish things cute and pretty on this planet. Jamming gender-neutral everything into their life kills individuality. Kills uniqueness. Kills discovery. Kills a sense of purpose. Your daughter and son will more likely grow up and use their talents if you actually encourage them in their interests along the way – if even that means letting them put on lip gloss and wear cute skirts while proving multivariable calculus theorems.
So give me multivariable calculus. And give me lacy sweet nothings for bedtime. We can have both.
And if these gender neutral androgynous women ever come into my neighborhood and make me wear gender neutral manjammies or make me wear those black long androgynous daytime jammies, I think I’d go join the Marines myself and start wearing camie jammmies and arm myself. I’m quite certain I’d risk my life to avoid the foolishness of a society that doesn’t protect the dignity of women, especially girls, especially at bedtime. Seriously, there are girls in far away troubled lands that would give anything to have the chance to pursue, in all its depths, the dignified future of a little girl with all the beauty, intelligence and grace that affords. Let's not drown her chance nor kill the breath of her life with the ignorance of misguided gender neutrality that encourages indifference towards the uniqueness, power and grace of girls and women.
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