Girl Plates and Boy Plates

My family and I are just trying to get through dinner.
The two year old is singing, and nursing a fresh wound from her brother’s fork. The seven month old is losing his patience with the green beans and is ready to be nursed. My husband and I are trying to finish our plates before the room implodes, and then the four year old begins to wail. He is red in the face and scraping the rice off his tongue. He had a bite to go before he cleared his plate. It was in his mouth, and now it is not.
“This isn’t my plate! It’s a girl plate!”
My immediate reaction is uncontrollable laughter. I had noticed while preparing the plates that I had accidentally switched the two plates that have faces on them, and was hoping that his aversion to change would not notice it. By the time I had my tired self under control, he was inconsolable. My husband was trying to inform him that it didn’t matter. The four-year-old didn’t care.
After twenty minutes of sobbing, I was pretty annoyed by the situation. We are not the kind of household that places a big emphasis on gender roles. Toys are toys; colors are colors. There are not separate activities for boys versus girls, there are not boy plates and girl plates… except the plates that have a boy face and a girl face on them, I suppose.
I continued to be annoyed by the over reaction, even though I knew that he was tired and is entering into a phase where he is just trying to figure out gender/sex organ/insert PC terminology here. He is four. When he no longer wants to walk down the “pink” toy aisles at the store, my annoyance almost steps up onto the soapbox.
All of this has become a new parenting experience for me. I know the score. I know what awaits our children whether we are paying attention or not. I want to raise sons that respect women. I want to raise sons that acknowledge the differences between men and women, but that know different does not mean unequal. I want them to fight against rape culture. I want the same for my daughter! Finally, I want them to have the freedom to be themselves.
It can be difficult to know what we are fighting against and translate that into age appropriate conversations with children. When I read about the damage of the pornography industry or the latest rape trial coverage, a flip out over some added eyelashes on a dinner plate sends my brain into Fix-It Mode. Because my son plays with his sister’s toys. He feeds the babies, and puts odd things in purses. He likes to paint toes. He does all these things and he is obsessed with trains, super heroes, and fart jokes. My daughter likes all these things also.
What the growing distinction between pink and blue, girls and boys does to our children bothers me. It tells my son that there is no way he should like any of the things that are in the pink aisles, when his nurturing self just might like to have a stuffed dog. Or a stuffed grandparent. It puts the cool bow and arrow Nerf sets that my daughter has a Merida-inspired fascination with in the blue aisle. It makes it so boy shorts are at least twice as long as girl shorts, and girl clothing without bows or frills is a rare find. It limits our children. The other day, I was wandering around in the toys with my children (I must be there too much) and overheard at least three different guardians inform their children they could not have a toy because they were not a specific gender.
Maybe this marketing had nothing to do with the epic freak out over the plate. Maybe he was just tired, and is learning what it means to be a boy. Maybe both are true.
What does it mean to be a boy? What does it mean to be a girl? During our formative years, we are hit with some pretty conflicting messages. Boys are told not to throw like a girl. Girl are hit with over-sexualized messages and clothing but told they need to be ladies. And boys will be boys.
I have a solution to all of this, but I don’t think advertisers will like it much. If a girl likes a toy, it is for girls. If a boy likes a toy, it is for boys. Most importantly, if a child likes a toy, it is for a child. If it keeps dinnertime freak outs in the food arena only, I am all for it.