Dora<\/a> popsicle. He sat on the front porch, licking Dora’s hair. He was as cute as could be, with his hair in lovely pigtails. Sweetie Pie is at a point where her hair is simply big. With the curls, the hair goes out instead of down, creating something of a baby ‘fro, so I usually put her hair in pigtails or barrettes. Whenever I do so, of course, Doodles wants pigtails or barrettes, too, and I’m happy to oblige.<\/p>\nAn older boy from down the street came ambling up. A younger older boy (does that make sense) was also playing nearby. “Is that a Dora<\/i> popsicle?” the older boy asked in horror. Doodles kept licking and, hackles rising, I said, “Yes.” The older boy turned to the younger older boy and sneered, “Look at his hair! Maybe he’s a girl!” While I wanted to smack the kid and yell, “What? Are you already<\/i> feeling insecure about your manhood?” I controlled myself and simply said in a chilly voice, “I can assure you, he’s a boy.” Something in my tone, though, must have given me away, and he took off.<\/p>\n
Now, let me say, it’s not the “girl” part that was offensive–I don’t find “girl” to be an insult. It was the tone and intent. Luckily, Doodles kept happily eating his Dora popsicle, but it made me really sad that at this young age he’s going to be facing people with such hardened notions about gender. And it also made me feel completely vulnerable, with this sudden insight that I can’t protect my little boy from the world, that there are people out there who are going to be mean and nasty to him and there’s not a thing I can do about it. My little boy is a sensitive, polite, caring child, and I’m so very proud of him. I’m going to teach him that boys can like Dora, wear pink, and put their hair in pigtails. And then I’m going to show him how to throw an uppercut followed by a left hook. That should take care of things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ever just want to haul off and smack the crap out of some seven year old? Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought I would, but there you go: you learn something new about yourself every day. Doodles and Sweetie and I were sitting on the front porch. The ice cream truck had just rolled down our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}