Geek. Pirate. Mom

There are plenty of times I like to hear that term of endearment. Like on Doctor Who. Because it means that River Song is lurking about, and I do love River.

I'm River Song. Check your records again.

Or when my mom’s reassuring me. That’s a sweetie that I love.

I don’t love it when men use it to patronize me.

Today I stopped in at Home Depot, fulfilling an agreement I’d made with TheBoy yesterday. I got to take a nap yesterday afternoon, so I tackled the errand he’d planned on running during that time- buying what we needed to rig up the pinata.

I admit, I’m dressed a little young today. I grabbed some black & white striped tights, a miniskirt and a black top, and called it a day. And I look a little young every day as it is. I don’t know my way around our local Home Depot, but I’ve spent enough time in home improvement stores over the years that I knew what aisles to look for. So I wasn’t going to ask for help, since I wanted to get a feel for the store, too.

And I rocked it. In fifteen minutes, I walked in the door, found what I needed, paid for it and walked back to my car. I was also asked by three separate employees if I needed help. Each of these men called me sweetie.

I wasn’t hearing things. These men weren’t being polite. They looked at little ol’ me and assumed that because I’m petite and wearing a mini-skirt, I had no idea what I was doing, even though I assured them I didn’t need help. And felt like calling me sweetie would somehow make the situation better.

By the time the last man asked me if I needed help choosing rope (when they have helpful little cards to explain the weight each type can carry), I lost it. I should have asked to talk to a manager, but I felt like just getting out of there.

So I told him this: “Excuse me? I’ve been going to home improvement stores since I was 7. My dad taught me how to use power tools when I was 10. I crewed about a dozen shows, working on set construction. I think I can pick out the rope and pully I need without help. Thanks.” And I grabbed my rope and pully and headed out towards the self-checkout.

I might be 5’2″ and a 95 lb weakling- but I know what I’m doing. Don’t assume that someone does or doesn’t need help. I don’t mind being asked- I do mind being asked after I’ve said no, because you think that I couldn’t possibly have a grasp on something like home improvement. Ugh.

At least they didn’t try it on River Song. I’d imagine they’d have been vaporized for being so ridiculous.

Day 5 of NaBloPoMo

Late yesterday, on my Twitter feed, I saw a few friends ranting about a t-shirt being put out by JC Penney. Since I was already frustrated and exhausted, I thought I’d up my daily rage intake and see what the fuss was about.

I was not prepared for what I saw.

If you can’t quite read it, JC Penney was selling a t-shirt that says, “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me.”

Just think about that for a minute. I’m all for clever t-shirts. But this goes beyond a funny t-shirt to a t-shirt that reenforces a dangerous notion, that girls should be more interested in what they look like than school.

Yes, this is dangerous. Already, if you look at any women’s magazine, 90% of the editorial content will be about making yourself look better. 100% of the ads will be pushing that ideal as well. Eating disorders are becoming more common in younger girls, who look at the images of celebrities that are plastered everywhere and aspire to become that.

Not only that, we keep pushing this fantasy of the “reality star.” Where all you have to be is someone who looks good, and fame will follow. Kids are too young to realize that particular brand of fame is fleeting- that a reality star who doesn’t have any actual talent usually doesn’t hang onto the public’s attention for more than a couple years. Or that the young actresses who get cast on TV shows that aren’t particularly talented actresses, but are really pretty, have short careers too. It only takes growing a little older to suddenly find yourself out of work.

I should share that the JC Penney story has a happy ending (sort of). After the outcry from the internet and media, the t-shirt has been removed and they issued this apology:

jcpenney is committed to being America’s destination for great style and great value for the whole family. We agree that the “Too pretty” t-shirt does not deliver an appropriate message, and we have immediately discontinued its sale. Our merchandise is intended to appeal to a broad customer base, not to offend them. We would like to apologize to our customers and are taking action to ensure that we continue to uphold the integrity of our merchandise that they have come to expect.”

While this shirt was pulled, it should never have made it onto the sales floor. Not only did someone design it (probably hired to create a bunch of “clever” tees in a short period of time), but a buyer thought it’d be appropriate and decided to buy up those t-shirts. There were plenty of opportunities for someone to have seen the shirt and asked JCP if this was a good idea.

I hope that more retailers wise up. Every couple years, someone tries to sell a t-shirt like this, or put out a toy that belittles intelligence (remember that Barbie who said “math is hard!”?). Hopefully, the internet continues to galvanize and point out that this is just plain wrong- and not accept a quick apology. After all, my boys both apologize when I catch them doing something wrong. It doesn’t mean that they know not to try it again.

Yes, I have boys, not girls. But obviously, I’m a woman, and was a girl. A smart girl at that. I skipped kindergarten (back when it wasn’t an academic class) because I knew how to read. I excelled in math, science and reading. In middle school, I started to teach myself simple commands in BASIC and wrote text-based programs. When we had to take part in the school science fair, I didn’t just do a project that I thought would earn me a passing grade- I thought of one that I thought might take me to the state science fair. (Alas, I didn’t make it past the county level… but I tried)

I was lucky that my mom always encouraged me to learn more, and taught me from an early age that there was nothing wrong with being a smart girl. We went to museums, zoos, and just about anywhere that my sister and I wanted to go that was learning related. My parents encouraged us to learn how to use computers- which seems like a silly thing now, but back in 1989, not everyone had computers at home.

We as a society should be doing that for girls. We still fill commercials with toys that encourage boys to innovate, build and learn, while we encourage girls to nurture babies and look nice (link: Here’s a great YouTube video about that from 2010). Not saying that nurturing is a bad thing, but I say there’s no harm in letting little girls play carpenter with pretend tools or giving them erector sets to see what they come up with.

But the first step is making sure that we keep telling companies that t-shirts like this are unacceptable. We should be telling girls that being smart is the way to make it in the world.

This morning a former colleague of mine posted on Facebook that he was happy he has girls instead of boys (he has two girls, roughly the same age as my boys), because he wouldn’t have to learn about dinosaurs. Ignoring the obvious gender role issue… it annoyed me a bit because, well, I was a girly girl… but I sure loved science!

My sister and I complained if we hadn’t been to a museum in awhile, and it generally didn’t matter what kind of museum. It could be an art museum, a children’s museum, a natural history museum or my favorite- the science museums. The highlight of our trips to San Diego wasn’t trips to Sea World, it was trips to Balboa Park to the museums!

I loved learning. Whether it was dinosaurs, marine animals, extinct mammals… I wanted to learn about them all. I threw myself headfirst into learning about the space program. Once my parents got a computer, I was on it all the time. Not just for typing up my school papers, but I taught myself how to use DOS and even learned how to program in BASIC. My sister was the same way too, though admittedly, I spent more time on space stuff and she spent more time learning about faerie lore. But we collaborated on a simple text based program that had a user walking down a hall and discovering various things in the rooms.

Talking to my mom about the dinosaur post, she said that being my parent was difficult. More often than not, I made them feel stupid- simply because I wanted to know something that neither of them knew much about. I realize now that the encyclopedia set in my room was less about helping me with my school work, and more about giving me a place to try to answer some of my own questions. She pointed out that there were lots of trips to the library or to museums to try to answer questions. When I was old enough, I do remember being turned loose on the microfiche at our library (oh how I love microfiche).

All this was done without the internet. While I have a son who asks just as many questions, I’ve been lucky that they’ve been about subjects I knew about or something that was googleable. I can have answers that are accurate enough to share within minutes.

But I am immensely grateful to both of them for giving my sister and I the opportunities to learn so many subjects, or that they taught us how to get information ourselves.

I will say though, that even with all my knowledge about dinosaurs, it has broken my heart to learn that the names I’d committed to memory have been rendered obsolete by new scientific findings. I am kidding. It’s proof that science is an amazing and ever evolving thing, where we learn more and more about subjects as time go by. Even if it means I have to get used to say pterosaur rather than pteradactyl. So thanks, Mom and Dad. You went through a lot to make sure that we got our answers, and kept us supplied with plenty of books. I really do appreciate all the work!

I am pleased to say that on the gender roles issue of that Facebook status, there were plenty of women who spoke up and said that they forced their parents to learn all sorts of non-girly information. Which is always wonderful to see- that I wasn’t the only scientifically minded girl out there.

ETA*: Always great to see people pop around for a discussion. Last month I posted about gender roles, and some of the damaging things we as a society do.

* ETA = Edited to Add

This week, I saw two things that made me wonder how we’re raising our kids these days… and why we haven’t come further. First was an old advice column from 2002 on Dr. Phil’s website.

In the column, a woman asked for advice about her 5 year old boy who had two older sisters and preferred to play with “girl toys” and wanted to wear girl clothes. The page is making the rounds of LGBT blogs, who are rightly concerned by Dr. Phil’s attitude. While he says that it could just be a phase, and clearly isn’t an indicator that her son is gay (which by the way, the mother never seemed to have mentioned). But he tells her to push the child towards boy clothes and boy toys, to direct him from anything that might confuse him.

Again, this is from 2002. It isn’t a new post, but it’s still on his blog. If he had changed his stance, then he should have removed the post, or clarified something on it. But he didn’t.

So what was the second thing? A friend of mine was lamenting that her son was being hassled about taking ballet. You know, since that’s for girls.

Can I just say once and for all, ballet is not just for girls. If it was, you wouldn’t have a Prince to attempt to save Odette in Swan Lake, a Nutcracker Prince or a Rat King. There would be no epic pas de deux filled with lifts.

My sister was a ballet dancer, and while there were rarely any boys in her classes when she was a girl, as she got older and moved up into more advanced classes… there were men. And obviously, the company she danced with was filled with them too. And you know what? Most of them were straight.

My friend’s son reminds me of a boy who lived across the street from us in high school. He was the sweetest little boy, whose greatest love was dancing. The summer my sister and I babysat him and his little sister, was a summer filled with two things- Barney and dance parties. You could put on any CD and he’d dance, dance, dance. But he loved to watch my sister dance, and tried his best to follow along. So he started to take ballet, and actually starred as Peter in a ballet of Peter and the Wolf. His dad had an issue with it.

Just so I can have it somewhere, here’s what I say to anyone when they try to say that ballet is just for girls. Ballet isn’t just for girls. It takes a great amount of strength and skill to dance the way that male dancers do- which is why a lot of professional athletes take ballet for agility (admittedly, a lot of pros turn to pilates and yoga these days). Just look at Gene Kelly, who was well versed in all sorts of dancing, but brought in ballet to many of his films. He danced with grace, but with an athleticism and masculinity that set him apart from other dancers. (No knock to Fred Astaire who seemed to glide effortlessly, but Gene Kelly made sure you knew it took a bit of effort- and it was worth every bit of it) Then look at Patrick Swayze. He grew up at his mother’s dance studio and played a lot of tough guys in Hollywood. Including a tough guy who danced in Dirty Dancing. (Exhibit A: Donald O’Connor and Gene Kelly “Moses“. Exhibit B: Donald O’Connor “Make Em Laugh” Ballet Exhibit A & B: Mikael Baryshnikov “Don Quixote” and a snippet from “White Nights“)

I get frustrated when people try to enforce gender roles. It’s deemed (mostly) acceptable if a girl is a tomboy, but weird for boys to want to do girl things. Let’s look at TheBoy and I. Yes, I am exceptionally girly. I cook, bake, sew, love make-up, jewelry and high heels. I also prefer my hair on the shorter side, really dig menswear (I even rocked a tie in the 6th grade), prefer action movies to chick flicks (though I do enjoy them), have played RPGs (the kind with dice and occasionally dungeons), love scifi, played video games (if I had more time, I still would)… oh, and I can use power tools. TheBoy? Grew up watching chick flicks and does enjoy watching them. He loves going to see plays and musicals, cooks and bakes as well, cleans… and honestly doesn’t know the difference between needle nose pliers and regular pliers.

Everywhere you seem to go on the internet, people complain about Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, who is a tomboy. She wears her hair short, dresses like a boy… and you know what? It could just be because she has two older brothers. It certainly has nothing to do with how she’s being raised, since her sister Zahara is a girly girl. And yet, you see people go on and on about how Angelina Jolie is raising her to be a lesbian… when she’s 5. (Lets not even get into the fact that you can’t make someone gay. You’re just born that way)

But that sort of attitude is everywhere. A blogger wrote about her preschooler being sneered at by mothers when he dressed as Daphne from Scooby Doo for Halloween. Last summer, my cousin bought my boys a cold bake oven (which we couldn’t actually use the mixes, since the Little Kidlet is allergic) that was Disney Princesses oven. Purple and pink. And you know what? To those two, it didn’t matter that it was purple and pink and had all the princesses… it was just an oven. They played with it for weeks, making us little treats out of Duplos.

I hope that everyone here remembers Katie, the first grader who was bullied because she liked Star Wars and was a girl. She was told that Star Wars was for boys, and for a few weeks, legions of geek girls were out there to tell her that sci-fi wasn’t just a boy thing. When I was writing a comment on Katie’s mother’s blog about it, my oldest sat next to me and asked what I was reading. I told him the whole story. He looked at me, with the strangest look on his face. “That wasn’t nice. Don’t they know that Star Wars is cool and for everyone?” I admit, he knows I love Star Wars. So at least I know I’m teaching him that girls can like whatever they want to like.

There really aren’t many things that are girl things and boy things, at least as far as toys and past times are concerned. Can’t we just be good parents, and support our kids in what they do? So what if your son wants to learn how to bake? He might become a famous pastry chef. What if he wants to dance? Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov had to get their start somewhere. Your daughter want to be a pilot or an astronaut? Amelia Earhart and Sally Ride paved the way for other women in the skies and space.

I believe that my role as a parent is to support my child, no matter what. I’m there to keep them safe, healthy and happy. If they want to learn to use a skateboard, I’m there with the helmet, safety equipment and bandaids. If either of them want to learn how to dance, I will find them a dance studio and take them to and from class. Because that’s what you do. You support them and love them. And you teach them that there’s no shame in being themselves.

So let’s ditch the gender roles. Maybe if we do, when our kids grow up there won’t be blatant sexism and discrimination (or at least they’ll be aware of it and better prepared to deal with it than we are). That might be a bit much to hope for, but really- if we aren’t changing the way our kids see the world, how is it ever going to change?