Smelly boys and pretty girls: smothering stereotypes

Detonation of my brain was approximately three seconds away, as I left a party on the weekend. It was not the raucous children overloaded on sugar that was leading me to want to neck myself, rather one of the parents.

I am a friendly kind of chick. I could talk the leg off an iron pot, make conversation with a potato chip and smile at the wind. I don’t have a problem speaking to complete strangers about total and utter rot. In fact it’s usually me instigating the rot. Unfortunately conversing with a particular stranger at the party was about as painful as inner-thigh chafing on a sweaty day.

This woman had one daughter. Listening to her drone on about how boys are so out of control, how they fight ALL THE TIME and how thankful she is to have a girl, was making me feel not so friendly. Clearly, she would know all about boys with her vast research into the topic, having one child of the opposite sex.

She should have gauged her audience prior to making those sweeping statements for when I threw in that I am the mother of three boys and I’m not sure all these generalisations apply, she looked absolutely horrified. Not at the potentially awkward situation of just bagging out an entire gender to a mother who solely has that gender but more at the thought of me raising three of the “critters”. She even cocked her nostril up a little and physically shivered when I mentioned my brood, telling me I deserved a medal (if only I had a chest to pin it on...).

The idea that a child could be something other than a stereotype, was foreign to her.

As the cake was placed on the table, the four girls jumped up on the seats to adore it (despite having dinosaurs all over it), proceeded to poke the cake and lick the cake. Yes, I said lick. Meanwhile, four of the six boys ran laps around the table shooting each other. The other two boys were inside, sharing a book. Dragon stranger rolled her eyes and reiterated how “out of control” the boys were and implored me to “look at the girls sitting so nicely.” Licking the cake? I resisted the temptation to point out their not-so-angelic table manners.

I’ll admit I am a little more sensitive to the popular trend of categorising boys and girls. Strangers frequently offer me sympathy for the lot I’ve been given. Three boys. Wow. Yes, my hands are full. Yes, they like to be active. Yes, they fart. And sometimes they smell. But so do my nieces. What’s your point?

Having three very different boys has driven my quest to break down stereotypes. We love to think boys are rowdy, messy, dirty and smelly while girls are pretty, calm, and quiet. Sure, boys can be more physical and as a whole, they seem to find it more difficult to sit still. This does not mean there are boys out there who are incapable of completing an activity quietly and thoroughly.

My eldest has recently embraced the joy of drawing and loves writing stories. He will sit at his desk in his room inventing characters and illustrations to match. There are no signs of ants in pants. Curiously, he doesn’t shoot random strangers with imaginary guns and his desire to wrestle, anyone, is nonexistent.

My second born is more of what the party lady would consider a stereotypical boy. I think he was born with his index finger pointed in the shooter position. He finds toilet humour hilarious, loves to climb, jump, wrestle and run. He has a whole repertoire of superhero slingshot type noises. He is able to sit still when there is chocolate on offer. Conversely, he loves to play with his cousin’s doll’s house and is partial to a game of “mums and dads”. He seems sufficiently in touch with his feminine side. Go figure.

Last child is too young to stereotype. He does have a penis though so that automatically puts him in the boy camp. We are considering buying him a doll for Christmas because he has taken a liking to dragging one round the house whenever we visit a friend who has all girls.

I haven’t raised girls so I can’t pass comment on my experience. I am a girl, though (did I need to point that out?). I have nieces and friends with girls and have witnessed a whole array of behaviours, just like boys. Girls who both sit still and quietly, and those that are loud and cannot concentrate for the length of time it takes to paint a fingernail.

It seems some people are still living by a nineteenth century rhyme [origin]. Let me welcome you to 2009, where boys play with dolls and girls race cars.

Why must we insist on stereotyping our kids? Sadly, we are guilty of doing it right into adulthood. Women love to shop, chat on the phone and spend hundreds of dollars on makeup, they can’t read maps or program a DVD, apparently. Evidently, men scratch their balls whilst watching 24 straight hours of football, drinking beer and having belching contests. They love a challenge and therefore never ask directions and don’t need to read instructions to put together an IKEA bookcase. My husband is only guilty of a couple of these things. Does that make him half-man?

Unless you’ve had a lobotomy and been raised by nuns, you’d recognise men and women, boys and girls, are quite different in the way we operate. I can’t do a bush wee as easily as my husband, for example. It doesn’t mean we fit in neat boxes of how genders should behave. Why on earth do we place these kind of pressures on our kids?

Girls who won’t wear dresses, who prefer to roll around in the dirt and drive cars through the sandpit and smash them into the walls, are still girls. Boys who like to sit still and colour in, concoct imaginary games with dolls and teddies and mime to the latest pop music still qualify to be boys.

The strong irritation I felt towards the mother at the party who had dissed all boys before actually spending any quality time with them, led me to dreams of wielding a pillow and gently lowering it over her mouth. Not really. I would love to get the pillow onto the stereotypes though.

Do your children fit the stereotypes of their genders? Do you offer your children all types of experiences & toys despite their gender, or do you prefer to stick to what you think is "gender appropriate"? Do you think we add to the problem by raising our boys and girls with clear gender distinctions? Comment on Kylie's blog here.

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