Don't Dress Your Cat in an Apron

I was thinking of Dan Greenburg's poem this weekend. We went to a nephew's football game on Saturday - he's in third grade, so it was more entertainment spectacle than sporting event, but still.... There were about a million flags thrown, which was probably a good thing, since the little boys were clearly learning the fundamentals of the game. Holding is a difficult concept to grasp, and pretty natural for a small person trying to stop another small person....

The bizarre part was that they also had cheerleaders, and sadly, it seemed that little girls were learning the fundamentals of the game too - "Smile! Don't look so angry!," "Watch the boys!," etc. And you could already see the competition developing between them - the pretty little girl with a perfect French braid who bossed all the other girls around and the little girl with grass stains on her knees and a messy ponytail. It made me sad to realize how much heartache some of them have in front of them, trying to be something they aren't or trying to figure out what they are after all they've been told they're supposed to be.

I still have my copy of Free to Be You and Me. My mother, a budding feminist, bought it for me for my first birthday, I think, and despite her best intentions, she gave off some of those messages, too. The men in my family ate first, talked first, read first, left the table first, and for years, I tagged along with them, leaving my mother and my grandmother to clean up after all of us. Any good survivor can tell you that it's important to ingratiate yourself with the power structure. Mental survival is a different story.

Anyway, I muddled through, breathing phrases like, "Patriarchal bullshit" under my breath. They'll muddle through, too, and figure out how to make a neat ponytail, how to smile when you don't want to, and how to reinvent yourself the first time someone gives you a chance.