Family
Is The Nerd Middle the Cure for Kiddie Sexism?
By Neal Pollack / April 24, 2008
My son has reached the dread age where the genders start to separate at school, and he’s not happy. While he likes nominally traditional boy things, such as baseball and basketball and watching cartoon explosions, he also enjoys the company of girls. But the girls at his school mostly play sugar-and-spicy games like princess or Holly Hobbie (which, amazingly, still exists), while the boys run around and pretend to be robots. Given a choice, my son, who’s repeatedly declared that princesses are for losers, would always rather be a robot. But given an additional choice, he’d want the girls to be robots and aliens too. Somewhere in the universe, and certainly in his mind, there are tough female robot and alien role models, but they never show up on the playground. Sadly, the era of pre-school egalitarianism seems to be ending fast.
In my vast experience as an alternative-themed parenting guru, I’ve heard from a lot of parents concerned that our culture is feeding gender stereotypes to their children, almost from birth. They worry about the Disney Princess marketing juggernaut and worry more seriously about Bratz culture, with its makeover parties for six-year-olds and dolls who live only to shop, gossip, and show off their flat bellies. They seem less bothered by the culture surrounding their boys, who, as usual, are playing with trucks and beating one another with sticks, but there’s still concern. An ad for Tonka trucks says “Boys: They’re just built different.” This goes along beautifully with an ad for a hideous product called “Rose Petal Cottage,” which features a little girl doing the wash and making cookies accompanied by the lyrics “I love when my laundry gets so clean/ Taking care of my home is a dream, dream, dream!” It would be foolish to completely deny gender differences, but is it really smart to propagandize our children into Stanley and Stella Kowalski? Man as brute and woman as precious subservient flower is so last century.
We’ve all encountered the tomboy who can execute a perfect hook slide and the little guy who enjoys wearing mommy’s pantyhose. We also know the girl who wears princess dresses to school or the boy whose only mission in life appears to be pile-driving other children into the ground. But the rest of our kids, the ones whose tastes and behaviors don’t entirely seem bound by their chromosomal makeup, can occupy something I call the “nerd middle.” Therein lies the solution to gender stereotyping.
Beyond the Transformers and Hannah Montana is a rich menu of dorky gender-neutral characters that command fan fealty, like all corporate entertainment products must. But they also confound traditional notions of what boys and girls should be, and how they should behave. The major female character on Spongebob Squarepants is an ass-kicking karate squirrel from Texas, while the show’s titular hero breaks out into show tunes unbidden, can’t drive a lick, and cares for his pet snail like a little girl would her kitty.
The Star Wars movies have Princess Leia (if not much else) to balance out the portentous testosterone. The lead children in the Narnia saga and The Golden Compass are smart, capable, brave—and girls. Dora The Explorer doesn’t seem interested in makeup and boys, and her cousin Diego only has eyes for baby animals. The Backyardigans, a show that’s previously received a whuppin’ in this space, also passes the nerd middle test. Crappy music aside, The Backyardigans teaches girls that they can be pirates, spies, Vikings, or cowboys. Just as importantly, they teach boys that girls can be those things.
Even superheroes, the traditional rulers of the fortress of male dorkitude, can and should be presented to girls in the nerd middle. In the Justice League: Unlimited cartoon series, which many of my son’s friends watch, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Hawkgirl, Black Canary, The Huntress, and several other heroines are presented as the equals, and often the betters, of their male hero counterparts. Kim Possible vaults into action on the Disney Channel, and, while dropping this reference makes me feel old, let us never forget the lessons of The Powerpuff Girls, a show whose central joke revolved around the fact that little girls named Blossom and Buttercup kicked ass.
So the right messages are out there. Why, then, in a world where there’s always a Pink Ranger, has the concept of girl power been so marginalized? Why does it seem radical to suggest that it could be otherwise? For every parent who grumbles about the evils of the Rose Petal Cottage on Feministing, there are a hundred who wouldn’t think twice before taking their girls to the mall to buy Barbie’s Dream Beach House. Even Lisa Simpson, a gender-neutral girl hero if ever one existed, worships her Malibu Stacy dolls. It’s as though we’re willfully ignoring the gender-mixing messages of the media our children consume. Either that, or we never really absorbed the messages in the first place.
From age five on, boys play t-ball while girls take ballet. Coed sleepovers, which really should be acceptable up until age 10, rarely even get off the ground. My wife and I, like good self-righteous urban liberals, try to counteract this as much as possible. Our son plays flag football, but he also takes gymnastics. He likes to peg ants in the backyard with a squirt gun, but he goes to cooking class on Monday evenings. We wrestle in the backyard, and then sometimes on rainy days I take him to kiddie yoga. When he goes over to his girl cousin’s house, they have a gender-free good time: shooting hoops, playing “zoo,” watching Electric Company videos, and staging elaborate High School Musical dance parties. Well, the last activity is pretty girly, but it is her house. Sometimes you must make concessions.
American life, on the surface, has never been more gender-neutral than it is now. Women go to war, and men make dinner. Men win Dancing With The Stars, and there are female American Gladiators. Both genders, apparently, are capable of playing the role of Bob Dylan. The only real gender-exclusive things in the world are the siring of children and childbirth, though recent current events have even called that exclusivity into question. Yet the Bratz persist, and Joe Francis, the pig behind Girls Gone Wild, continues to make millions even as he stews in jail. It’s up to us parents to encourage the gender-neutral side of our culture, and to try and persuade our children that the battle of the sexes need not continue along the same path.
Elijah’s best friend (or second-best, depending on the week) is a cute, smart little girl named Ariel. They’re weird in the exact same way, and it’s obvious that they get each other. Friends like that are rare at any age. Their favorite activity is to play Star Wars, and Ariel always gets to be Luke Skywalker. The fact that a girl is playing a male lead barely even occurs to them.
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I was raised gender-neutrally. My parents taught me that it was ok to do what I wanted even if it was a "boy" thing. They didn’t push anything on me and let me be who I was. Consequently I now love a lot of different things. Cooking, cars, sports, crocheting and sewing, gardening, religion, politics, children, action movies, and classic literature. I’m a very happy woman. I’m also partnered with a loving man who was lucky enough to have parents like mine. He loves writing, film, acting, sex and the city, organizing and cleaning, religion, politics, children, classic literature, pop culture, and femenism. We are so happy together it is ridiculous, and we plan on having children and raising them the way we were raised. There seems to be a lot of fear in this thread that if we don’t split the range of human qualities and emotions in two and give half to men and half to women then people will stop falling in love and building loving families, and that Jews will stop being Jews. Don’t be afraid. I promise it isn’t true.Â
I suppose you will be thinking about the Hannah Montana flap. This is the kind of thing that makes for people leave the building. Home schooling, far-right religion, stuff like that. Chasidism. Or anyway, Modern Orthodoxy. Single-sex schools. No TV, or not much. Isolation! Oy! Well, if it's between isolation and insanity, the choice makes itself. Insanity is not acceptable, and sanity is not negotiable. Now what are you going to do, young parents? Poor things.
I have watched Hannah Montana. It is not overtly sexual, but the get-ups of the girls are extremely decorative, with a dingaling "jewelry" gizmo hanging from every ear, every wrist, painted fingertip, no square inch left undecorated. The effect is tarty. Sexual. It is TOO. You need somebody to draw you a picture? Well Vanity Fair just has. The Amish look better, in their cute little simple dresses. You may have to (horrors!) REBEL and create some kind of Urban Non Yuck Zone (UNYZ)which is either MO or Amish tinged. Where it is safe to be a little girl. Or a little boy. Or little at all. Where is the Weird Non-Elite Parents Association when you need them? (WNEPA)
Or maybe we should just send them to the spinning mills and be done with it. Forget childhood. Consume, kid. You're just an economic animal.
We agree. Yes, we need the return of honest, simple thinkers, on both side of the gender divide. We need cultured men who read books without apology. We need young girls who read books without apology. I completely agree that all these bulging robot muscles for boys, and pink this, pink that, pink room, pink life, pink brain, tarted up cartoon characters, who are violent with males, that is all excessive. Of course a man should be involved with his kids, in any way the family find convenient. "Nerd" is just a stupid modern term for someone who thinks. Long live nerds! Gender differences are real. But they should be regarded calmly, as facts of life, not as evils, or as prisons.
(You go a little far for me, and you know where. But we agree about much more than we disagree about. Have a good time, and lots of adorable grandchildren. Sounds like you will.)
You want normalcy, but expanded normalcy. I am not sure you can have that. But down with popular culture, absolutely. And of course a man can change a diaper, and still be a man. That's between him and his wife, not the Central Committee, for crying out loud. I am grateful for the normal sound of your voice. There is so much dogmatism. I am old enough to remember the nonsense of social engineering, way back, way back. Common sense and decency are going to have to be reasserted. If that's a little right wing, well, be careful not to go to far, but, so what.
Anonymous, I have kids. Two, a boy and a girl. And yet I totally agree with Neal. The nerd is a safe space for kids away from the prisons that gender have become in North America.
My 7 year-old boy likes Transformers, Bionicles, Neoshifters, and cartoons where things explode and the bad guys are caught in the end. But he also likes things that some people count as "feminine": imaginative play, dancing, singing, art and beautiful things, reading. He enjoys running around with the boys in his class and gym class but he also can spend a recess playing with girls, if they are playing something generic like supermarket or house (fairy princess is too much for him). I have never worried about whether or not I would get grandchildren from this kid, even when he wore a dress as a little kid in day care during dress-up hour. Why? Well, the first reason is because I am not terrified of him being gay, because I don't believe it's a bad thing to be. The second reason is because our culture's current ideas of gender are so freakin' rigid that I can't agree with them, and I don't think our masculine ideal encourages men to become parents.
My husband has been told by a few people that they thought he was gay, because he doesn't like sports, he loves to hang out with people and cook for them, and he has female friends. Just tonight my cousin's husband was over with their new baby (she was at home recovering from dental surgery), and my sister remarked that he was so good with the baby that it made him seem effeminate! So it seems like the masculine ideal in this culture only loves sports or other specific activities, is anti-social, cannot cook or otherwise take care of himself, cannot be comfortable around women, and is a lousy parent.
Well, that kind of man, frankly, sounds like an asshole, hopefully the kind that is such a jerk no woman would ever want to procreate with him. I really hope my son won't grow up to emulate that idea of masculinity.
Having grandkids has a tendency to matter when the age to have them is reached. It's a normal life stage. You will reach it, too. There is no escape. Grandpuppies will not do. Fear it.
As for Ma'ayan, she has a right to her opinion, and to her youth. Still, there is no substitute for experience, and that, itself, is not known before experience, and has to be taken on faith. Ma'ayan calls for balance with structure. Fine. She says gender is socially-imposed artificiality that children should be spared. Laughable. Not her fault! The whole Frankfurt School sold Socialism under that label for fifty years so even intelligent people now think it is the only nice way to think. But the children know better. I agree with Neal – less pink tulle and bulging robot muscles, more good clean fun. But the girls can play house under the table, and not invite the boys. And the boys can have their own cave under the piano, and not invite the girls.
Just as long as we can all agree that having grandkids is the only benchmark for success in life and Ma'ayan has no say in anything because she's not yet married.
…because that is one serious stretch. The boys in question are all of 6 now, and yes, they're fine, and no, for Pete's sake, their parents weren't "making one of them into a girl." They were letting them be themselves. If they want to have a "Pirate" birthday party, they have a "Pirate" birthday party. If they want to play "Princess," that's fine, too. Nothing is forced on them, and nothing that's harmless is denied due to "gender roles."
Have you ever spent extensive time with little boys? While yes, there are exceptions to the rule, a lot of them like to play pretty hard–wrestling, launching themselves off of and into things, and just generally colliding with one another. What was noteworthy was that the parents of these two let the boys run around as needed, wrestle intensely…and play dress up however the heck they wanted to.
Parents cannot "make" a boy into a girl or vice-versa. They can only expose their child to various cultural influences and see what takes hold. And yes, Helen, The Electric Company is available on DVD.
But Helen, how did they actually turn out? It's the results that count, not your philosophic approval. Fighting dirty is not manly! Neither is wearing a dress. Is this guy ok? Maybe he hated his brother because for the brother, things were working out more smoothly. Poor little kids. I hope they are all right, now. Probably are. Must have faith.
If the parents wanted to have a boy and girl, and therefore made one of the two boys into a girl, psychically and unconsciously, that is a serious no-no against "letting people be themselves", don't you think? Major ouch. Major. Oy.
I think Anonymous's concern for your future progeny is rooted in homophobia, don't you? He/She is really saying that if you let your kid plays with girls and choreograph production numbers that he will turn out gay!
 Which, of course, knowing you, is absolutely fine.
It breaks my heart to see the gender divide happening in my older son's 2nd grade class as well. He gets along with girls better than boys, mainly because he is a gentle and highly verbal kid. But now that The Pink has taken hold of the girls, their birthday parties are playdates are gender segregated.
I have never seen Sandy "Cheeks" in action.Are you sure this material is clean? Family-friendly? I never trusted Wonder Woman, with her whip and tight costume. "Awesome"? As for grandchildren – it is just so far away, for you! Still, you have to force yourself to think. You are not raising a little boy! You are raising a man. This man happens, just for now, to be a little boy. You do, too, want your son to do …. what you did. Have a kid. Why shouldn't he have what you have? Well, he won't, unless you work on it. Now how about that. That's the modern world. Do you want "Cheeks" for a daughter-in-law? My guess is no.
Make your values plain, now that he is still listening. His ears will close in a very, very few years, so get it all in, now.
Are these dusty relics from your past…or did you buy the DVDs on Amazon? Either way, Elijah is a lucky kid.Â
Anyhoo, from my perspective, which, gosh, probably isn't All that different from Neal's, it's all about letting your kids be who they are, but also giving them options to explore. Wrestling and cooking class? Sounds good to me, if he enjoys them both. I used to care for twin boys, aged 3. One liked to wear a dress, arrange flowers, and play with my hair. He also liked to fight dirty with his brother. His parents let him do both (although they refereed the fighting). I was impressed by their willingness to let their son express himself fully and naturally.
And when I say I find boy culture boring, I mean some of their toys and TV shows. I don't mean their wrestling and fort-building.Â
This has nothing to do about whether or not I have grandchildren. I love my son, and if he has children I will love them as well, but propagating the species isn't my first priority. There are plenty of people around me who are taking care of that. I'm concerned about cultural roles, and popular culture matters in shaping them.
Also, Sandy Cheeks is awesome. Â
I don't have that much control over my son's life. He does what he wants with his friends at school. But I can't help it if I find most of his boy friends (and their culture) boring. I felt the same way about boys and boy culture when I was growing up, even though I love sports and superheroes like any good American boy.
"People have a right to be what they are."-Anon above
How are children suppose to develop into who they are when their parents destroy their natural instincts by forcing them into gender specific roles. People only realize who they are when they are able to explore all aspects of the growing up process, in a gender neutral way.Â
Neal Pollack I really appreciate parents like you, who are open and willing to try raising their children in a gender neutral environment. I have seen parents steer their children in the directions they believe society wants them to go towards, based off of the different activities they plan for their girls and their boys. Even when parents dress their girls in pink, or in dresses, all the time and their boys in only blue, black and green, this is another way that parents are shaping their gender stereotypes. Â
I remember playing T-ball as a kid and when my friends and I were older we played baseball. Every season the number of girls on the team trickled down and the league became predominately male. At the age of 10 I was the only girl left and didn't notice until other parents brought it to my attention. I soon joined all girls softball as a result of this. It's ashame that I was influenced by this gender stereotype that boys play baseball and girls play softball at such an early age.
So where it is hard and at some point a parent has to make a conscious decision how they want to raise their children in terms of gender specific activities, I think the parents that find the balance without making clear distinctions between the genders visible to their children, are the most successful. Â Â
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