According to the local paper, the publisher responded and told her she had made \u201ca very good point\u201d. \u201cAfter all, girls can like \u2018boy\u2019 things too,\u201d wrote Abdo, adding that it had \u201cdecided to take your advice\u201d.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Because everyone knows bugs are \u201cboy\u201d things. Not, you know, just plain\u00a0things.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
While I\u2019m glad Abdo is making a change, I think they missed the overall point. The point was not that girls can like bugs too, it was that bugs are not boy<\/em> things to begin with. Unfortunate as it is, how we label things affects how children perceive them. \u201cBugs are boy things, but girls can like them too\u201d is a completely different message from \u201cBugs are cool, all children can enjoy them.\u201d<\/p>\n
This distinction came to mind this\u00a0afternoon while\u00a0I spent several hours sewing cloth diapers for baby dolls. I\u2019ve enjoyed sewing since I was a little girl, and\u00a0I always expected I would\u00a0spend\u00a0time sewing doll clothes and diapers once I was a mother. But you know what? I expected I would do\u00a0so at the bequest of\u00a0my daughter<\/em>. But no. It was my son<\/em> who asked me to make diapers for his baby dolls.<\/p>\n
Sally has never really shown an interest in baby dolls. Several years ago my sister-in-law gave us her old Bitty Babies and a whole box full of Bitty Baby clothing. I was excited to have high quality dolls and doll clothes for Sally to play with, but Sally never gave them a second look. For years the dolls sat in their cubby in the playroom, untouched. Last summer I finally put the dolls up in the closet, to clear some space in her room. But today I got them out while doing some rearranging in the closet, and Bobby was mesmerized.<\/p>\n
Bobby spent a while holding the dolls upright and then laying them down, saying \u201cWake\u201d and \u201cSleep\u201d and watching as their eyes opened and closed. Then I helped him dress the dolls, and he became excited with the doll shoes he found in the box. He got out a blanket, laid the dolls down, and covered them. \u201cNight night,\u201d he said, holding one of the doll\u2019s hands. Then he said \u201cWake up!\u201d and picked them up one by one. Then he announced \u201cDiaper change!\u201d and realized that the dolls did not in fact have diapers. Hence the diaper making.<\/p>\n
In one day Bobby has expressed more interest in those Bitty Babies\u00a0than Sally has in the past four years.<\/p>\n
Now let me bring this back to my original point. If we play this through the \u201cboys can like girl things too\u201d lens, the fact that Sally couldn\u2019t care less about dolls doesn\u2019t fit the narrative at all. If we position dolls as girl things, but allow that boys can play with them to, what are we to make of Sally? This narrative both imagines the other-gendered child as acting outside of their normal sphere and creates a sort of conformity over all same-gendered children. But this assumed\u00a0conformity others girls who don\u2019t play with dolls. Further,\u00a0a little boy playing with dolls is behaving normally and should not be seen as\u00a0acting\u00a0outside of his sphere.<\/p>\n
In my experience, little boys are just as nurturing as little girls.<\/p>\n
If we view Bobby and Sally\u2019s play through the \u201cboys can like girl things too\u201d lens, both Bobby and Sally are in some sense abnormal\u2014Sally for not playing with dolls, and Bobby for playing with dolls. Both are stepping outside of the gendered play we deem \u201cnormal\u201d for them, and while the \u201cboys can like girl things too\u201d narrative allows for that, it still treats their actions as a transgression of boundaries. These boundaries we create are a problem. There is no reason for children\u2019s play (or interests) to be as strictly\u00a0gendered as it is in our society today.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019m glad Abdo Publishing is rebranding their \u201cBiggest Baddest\u201d\u00a0series to market it to all children. I just hope that they\u2014and we\u2014can move beyond \u201cgirls can play with boy things too\u201d (and \u201cboys can play with girl things too\u201d) to questioning\u00a0the very way we divide the world into\u00a0\u201cboy\u201d things and\u00a0\u201cgirl\u201d things in the first place.<\/p>\n
I leave you with this:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This fall a little girl wrote to Abdo Publishing after becoming concerned that the book she was reading, “The Biggest Baddest Book of Bugs,” was part of a series titled “Biggest, Baddest Books for Boys.” “Some girls would like to be entomologists too.,” she explained. Abdo wrote back, thanking her concern and agreeing to change the series title to “Biggest, Baddest Books.” But there was something about the story that struck me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[24,135],"class_list":["post-24284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","tag-children","tag-gender"],"yoast_head":"\n
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