More Boys and Girls

I wanted to write today about the whole gender thing again. We mentioned in class about young children, boys playing with trucks and girls playing with dolls and Easy Bake ovens in the kitchen. I think that as a child, one cannot decide what to play with unless they are infuenced by others. This of course refers to the parents. I think that if it were not for parents and other adults teaching thier children that boys play with manly thigns and girls love the color, then the boys and girls would be playing with everyhting. Case and point...I work at a preschool, so I see first hand what the children enjoy to play with. The boys run to the legos and blocks. Girls play with the little kitchen and have dolls in thier hands. But not all are like that. Just the other day two four year old boys went to the costume chest and asked me to help them put on fairy princess costumes (and the wings too!) I started laughing, and of course thought nothing negative about it. I thought it was great and thier teacher thought the same thing, saying "You know, I think it is great they can do that and experiment, it's nothing bad." Very true I think. That very same day during play time again, soem other boys went to the mirror/makeup station and pretended to brush their hair, like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty they said. Tehy also pretended to put on lipstick too. Then I thought for a second how they came about to do those things. Was it from watchign all those princess Dsiney movies, listenign to the girls and watchign them play with all those things, the way thier parents treated them. I do not know. but it is definetly true that they must have recieved soem type of influence. Girls young fro ma young age the color fo pink and the significance it has to beign girly and cute and beautiful. One little girl three year old who always wears pink clothing and has her nails pink, was coloring a picture. Of course, she colored everyhting pink. I asked her why she always colored every picture pink. She said,"because I like it." "But why" I always tell her. "Because it is sooo beautiful," she explained in a cheerful voice. Tehn I told her, "but how do you know it is a beautiful color?" I knew the answer to this question but waited anyway. "Becasue my mommy tells me it is beautiful." And that is it. If her mom were to tell her the most beautiful color is black, she would show up everyday in black and proabably think pink is ugly. So it is us who creates these differences between males and females. I know I like to shop, dress well, get a manicure and pedicaure every once in a while, and put on makeup. But I wonder what brought me to do all that. I guess just growing up, seeign your other peer, what is on the television. Right now there is alot of fashion networks and celebrity gossip on whats the newest "it" thign to buy or look at. For us girls, it really takes control of us. We spend so much money on clothes then we even need to. But soemtimes we cannot help it. We want the newest fashion thing out and always want to look our best. It's weird. Personally, I do not thnik it is a bad thign to do all of these things, but its strange to sit back and actually relaize how much we are being influnced more and more each day. Same goes for guys I believe. They proabably are doign soemthign just because it is the macho thign to do, like playign basketball, watchign sports, dating soemone when they do not really wan to so they don't get teased from their firends for not havign a girlfriend. I think things like these are never going to stop. We are all just like wierd robots, doing whjat is expected of us, and not even thinkign anything of it.