My Son's Pink Boots

Now that I've got a son and a daughter, my usual levels of hyper gender-awareness are even heightened. It was easy to put my daughter in whatever clothes I wanted.  Dinosaurs or kittens.  Pink or blue.  And I did so at my whim, trying neither to diminish the feminine nor glorify it; an attempt to postpone the day that my wild, sensitive, stubborn, perceptive, loving child absorb a sense of the power or importance of "prettiness" before the world shoved it down her throat. 

Up until quite recently, it was a common occurrence for people to mistake Edie for a boy.  I keep her hair short, and on the days she had no signifying pink on her person, she was often thought a lad.  That does not happen anymore, because preschool happened.  And that means my sponge of a daughter now has an intricate classification system of what is for boys and what is for girls, and even tells me the exact source of her gender attribution from time to time.  "That," she'll say "is a Matilda shirt.  Da sleeves are puffy.  Wookit dat.  I smoosh dem."  One morning, as I tried to get her to put on some grey sweatpants, she collapsed on the floor in anguish, and after a some indecipherable blubbering, I gleaned between sobs that she was begging me not to make her wear "boy" pants.  These were in fact from a girls section of a store.  But they were 100% grey.  I've since sewn hearts on them - it's come to that.  Sometimes she'll wear them now, always taking the time to point out the embellishment that makes them acceptable.  This did not happen just a few months ago.  She wore a dress as happily as she wore a boxy navy blue tee shirt.  These preferences do not stem from her DNA. 

But I am decidedly not trying to raise Baby X, either.  I certainly read "female".  My family is not a performance piece, and I totally understand and respect Edie's desire to fall in line.  It's the pull to be part of society. It's natural. It's limiting. But right now, it's simple.  There will be days to come when it all gets more complicated for her, so I do appreciate the grace of this moment, knowing it won't always be so easy.  But I can't pretend to like watching my daughter in emotional pain over the thought of not displaying her gender the way she's been shown she ought to.

And then there is little guy Eli.  If you know me, you may have told me how much he looks like a little boy.  If you do not, you may well have told me how pretty my daughter is.  Both of these things happen. A lot.  I don't correct people on the s/he issue unless not doing so will result in my dancing around pronouns in a disingenuous way.  I mostly hate the correcting because people look positively stricken when they realize they've called a boy "she".  As a "she," who is raising a "she," I'm a little put off by that reaction.  Moreover, Eli is a baby.  He's not macho.  He's not femme.  He's cuddly and needly and giggly and drooly.  And, yeah, there is some male genitalia up in that diaper.  But besides a higher risk for getting your shirt peed on, it truly makes no difference at the moment.  I know that won't be the case forever.

Because as sad as it is to see Edie turn away from ways to express herself and to expend her precious energy on performing "girl," she does not devalue that which is for boys.  Not the way we all do when it comes to "girl" things for our boys.  Even me.  Even women's studies major feminist stick-in-the-mud me.  I didn't know the sex of either child before they were born (and folks: it's sex. Babies have a sex. You don't find out the gender.  You presume the gender and statistically speaking you may well be right.  But it's the sex the ultrasound tech can discern.  Not the psychosocial, behavioral, cultural, etc. experience of being a boy or girl.) So, I had lots of yellows and duckies and beige as far as clothes.  And, some boy stuff.  That is, clothing or decorations that say: boy.  But none that read: girl. I have had to face that a lot more this time around.  I have given away truck loads of Edie's old clothes only to replace them with the drab palette of little boy.  It's not just blue.  It's navy blue.  And his career choices seem to land him as either fireman or quarterback. Just aesthetically, it's depressing.

But again I am NOT trying to make a statement with my kids.  I don't mind a good statement, but I'll go ahead and make those myself.  So it's a fine line I walk.  I'm not about to put Eli in a tutu just because, hey, why can't boys wear tutus?  Because he's got no horse in this race at the moment.  And what I want for him is to feel love and comfort, and that means going with the (sexist) flow.  Now if he wants to wear dresses and tutus one day?  Well, he's going to have a mom who is particularly (perhaps peculiarly) ready to fight for his right to do that.  If he wants to denigrate dresses and tutus?  That will be a whole lot harder for me.  Especially considering I feel like a contributor to that eventuality at times, trading perfectly good butterfly shirts for yet another puppy dog brown number.

He will, however, be wearing pink boots this winter.  Because while I don't want to make him a walking (um, rolling) statement, I also can't help but want to push back on an impulse to keep pink away from my son.  Because there is endless beauty in the feminine.  And until the world and preschool comes in and teaches him otherwise, I do want him to develop as freely as his sister was allowed to.  Not in some gender vacuum.  But, ideally, with thoughtful and careful parents who try and stay mindful of not labeling our children and their preferences, behaviors, or other traits in limiting ways.  And because, these boots, these are really nice boots.  Thinsulate.  They stay up and keep him warm while he swings in the baby swing at the playground, babbling and laughing at his big sister, looking at her with pure love and admiration, not colored by pink or blue.