On princess and firefighter

I am always curious how gender construction take place, how little boys and girls take up different gender roles consciously or unconsciously in their pursuit of a grown up image for themselves. Having been sharing MM’s life in such proximity for almost three years, I am maybe more baffled than illuminated. I used to (and still) regard gender as a social construction, hence I have tried (consciously, but not strictly) from the beginning of MM’s life to avoid gender stereotypes: I told my friends to avoid pink in their gifts for MM, I chose gender neutral beddings and toys, even Mamiecath sent a feminist children’s book (about little girl-elephants rejecting pink clothes in order to be able to roll in the mud with their brothers). But then later, I was unable to resist buying her cute little girls’ outfits, though I still avoid pink.

But MM grows into a very girly girl. She was in total bliss when she received her first baby doll at her first birthday, and had brought that doll with her everywhere she went for almost an entire year. Her answer to “what gift do you want” has always been a doll or a book. A while after she started day care (she started at 16-month-old), she announced that her favorite color was pink (I was sure that she picked that up from other girls in school). Last year she spent the whole summer wearing pants (too much air conditioning in school), this past winter she discovered tights and wanted to be in tights everyday (she did not care about dresses at first and saw it as a nuisance that she had to wear dress if she wanted thighs), then now she always wants to be in skirts or dresses (even though sometimes she labors over her choice because pants have pockets and she really “needs” pockets). Often after dressing her in the morning, I would say “go show it to daddy” as a way to send her away to bother Antoine instead so that I can prepare my own stuff. Each time Antoine would say “comment tu es belle!” (you are so pretty). Then I noticed that one day MM said, “regarde moi papa, je suis belle?” (I don’t remember the exact words but I remember that it was posed as a question). But after that, she says each time “regarde comment je suis belle” (see how pretty I am), and I am no longer sure whether it is posed as a question or as a comment on herself.

We introduced the big girl bed after she turned two. Because Julian’s was called a big boy bed, she started to pay attention to the difference between girls and boys. Since our last visit to Oscar, she noticed that Oscar stood up while he peed. A few days later, she made the comment that girls sat to pee while boys stood. Then, a while ago, she revealed to me that she, Dahlia, Eva, Lauren, Charlotte were girls and Matthew, Brandon, and Tyresse were boys. But she was not so sure when I asked her if Oscar and Julian were boys or girls. Two days after she became an expert in telling who was a girl and who was a boy. Then, after a fire truck visited her school, she told me that all the boys liked playing fire truck games, but not the girls, all the girls preferred playing mammy and baby. They all wanted to be mothers, but all the boys wanted to be firemen. This morning, Antoine turned on the TV to watch the royal wedding in London. MM asked who these people were, when Antoine told her Kate Middleton was the princess, MM protested, “not, I am the princess!” The princess game has kicked in. I still remember how her eyes lit up when she saw Jennifer’s Barbie dolls or when Civa let her use her princess cup. She was a ladybug and a cat for the last two Halloweens. Now she wants to be a princess when she plays dress up. I am always surprised by how efficiently little kids absorb these barely pronounced social codes, and how these secret or not-so-secret codes are transmitted between them, and how seamlessly they interact with their innate tendencies and shape their fantasies.

Yes, innate tendencies, do I believe in that? I would say no before but now I am not so sure. We bought her quite some toys when she turned two: train tracks, building blocks, cars, puzzles, cutting fruits, baby stroller… but she was never really attracted to trains or blocks, and always goes to her kitchen toys. Julian loves her train sets but she isn’t affected by his enthusiasm (yet she shared Oscar’s obsession with spider man and dinosaurs temporally, picking up their value after him). MM has never been the kid running in the playground when she is alone, she always prefers to sit in the little house and pretend that she is making up dinner. Are these innate tendencies? Of course, even if they are innate to MM, there is no need to generalize them to the entire female population.

But are they really innate? Maybe not, maybe she runs to her kitchen toys and babies because that is what she sees me doing. I do not really spend my day building train tracks. Take MM’s enthusiasm for books for example. It is not something innate, it is so only because we have shared so many books with her and showed her how enjoyable reading can be. And, also because reading is an activity that parents have to be involved, I can get her a bunch of toys and say “play” and leave, but when it comes to a book, I have to read to her. But I still can’t deny girls’ general passion for dolls and domestic play and boys’ enthusiasm for trains and superheroes, even without parental intervention. Of course, we do not live in a social vacuum and socialization happens not only at home; kids pick up messages from each other, their teachers, tv, in the playground and on the streets, even from your unspoken words and implicit gestures. But then, if it is so, does it mean that such gender stereotyping at an early age is unavoidable? And why do I bother?

It is not that I want her to become a Tom boy or a masculine girl. It is that I kind of believe masculine and feminine should not become relevant labels so early on (and for that reason overly sexualized Barbie dolls hardly qualify as appropriate toys). I kind of wish that they would have the open space to enjoy just being a little kid, discover the fun of dolls and blocks and trains, explore the world of princesses and mothers as well as that of firefighters and superheroes, without being oriented into separate worlds at age three. But maybe exploring these fantasy worlds is about identifying with and assigning different gender roles. Maybe it is these ready-made fantasy worlds that are the problem; you cannot enter into a princess narrative without identifying who the princess and the prince are, and how they look and act (that is why I enjoy reading her Happy Prince so much more than Snow White).

I do believe that MM will grow up in a world in which her gender would not confine or inhibit her sense of possibility. This is not what worries me, what worries me is how the interpellation of gendered subjects happens so early on, how it feeds and molds their desires and fantasies, and how these fantasies would continue to shape their identity and sense of happiness. Did not we all know that feminine beauty is an ideological construction facilitating patriarchal control, yet still aspire to a certain degree to be the beautiful Snow White (though we no longer announce like MM did -“je suis pas la reine, je suis Snow White”)? Have not it happened often to us that even though we believe in our choice, we are still conflicted when it does not fit into certain social expectations or our sense of what happiness should look like? Is not this how dominant social discourse continues to mold us as subjects? Maybe, it is how conventional happiness looks like in children’s play, how gender stereotyping of girls and boys seem to happen everywhere and in everything, and how easily they are taken up, that scare me.