What is girl?
Helena’s feeling very sensitive about her short hair. First, her brother teased her.
You look like a boy. You look like a boy.
We finally got him to shut up, although he’s only doing his big brother job, to be fair.
It didn’t stop there though. Put her in anything but pink frills and people decide she’s a boy. They compliment me (in her hearing) on how beautiful my boy’s eyes are. Or how well he climbs. People say to their children “Why don’t you ask that boy his name?” The grocery checkout person says, “How are you today, sir?” Or they ask me, “How old is he?”
She, says Helena. She. Her. I’m a GIRL!
Today, she burst into tears as she was getting ready for bathtime. “I don’t want short hair,” she sobbed. “Everyone thinks I’m a BOY. I will have to wear dresses all the time so people will know I’m a girl.”
“People are stupid,” her (not very) wise mother said. Helena howled louder.
“I don’t like that word stupid.”
“I’m sorry,” said I. “Does it matter if people think you’re a boy? Or can’t you just know and just think they’re easily fooled?”
“It matters!” she sobbed.
“What does being a girl mean?” I asked.
“Being pretty,” said the blotchy, runny nosed exhausted shred of a child.
Do I need to tell you how far and fast my heart sank?
“What else does being a girl mean?” I tried as Helena cried on. “Does it mean being strong?”
“Yes. And being funny,” she sniffed.
“And being smart?”
“And silly. And loving.”
“These are all good things.”
“Yes.”
Thing is, we can fast talk ourselves out of the bad moment, but Helena is being inundated with this message: that girlness is about how you look. It’s terrible and inescapable. I could dress her up girly to cue people as to her gender, which simply reinforces how much, as a society, we use signifiers, rather than our brains, to decide who and what people are. Pink? Girl. Skirt? Girl. Quiet? Girl. Hairclip? Girl. Daniel had a little phase of wearing hairclips, as did his friend Tennessee. Didn’t make ‘em girls.
I don’t know how to save the children from this. Their gender is being written on them daily in big pink and blue letters and I can’t erase all the markings. I just want — I so want — them to feel free to be who they are, whatever our little male and female boxes say they should be.
And I really want my daughter to believe that her beauty transcends her haircut.
How very heartbreaking!!!
Our daughter thankfully is too young for the lesson and enjoys her firetrucks and trains and her princesses and dresses all at once!
Your daughter is gorgeous and it breaks my heart for her to think anything else just because of her haircut (which is adorable BTW)! I guess I am heading down that road soon enough. Everyone thinks my daughter is a boy (mostly because I tend to avoid pink at all costs). You are so right… why is it such a stigma for a girl to have short hair or wear blue? That bothers me to no end as well.
firstly, your dear child looks like an ELF. If I saw such a fetching creature, I would run towards the sprite and ask her how things go in Neverland, for she is just a minute little tidbit of Tinkerbell’s wand, and she delights me immensely with her precocious and well-cut hair. I’m impressed.
Secondly, I am saddened so much, and also heartened by Helena’s advancements…while it displeases me to hear a child wail about women having to be ‘pretty’, I also think, “Wait a minute. Should not all women deem themselves pretty? Aren’t women, in general, not only the fairer of the sexes, but the most important, as well? And shouldn’t we find it important that our countenance match our accomplishments?”
That said, and poorly stated, I am regretful that Miss Helena finds her cut ‘boyish’, as I have recently cut my hair, as well, and am asking the same questions to Michael (in a different tone):
“Do I look like a lesbian?”
“No”
“Are you sure? ‘Cause this borders on dyke-ish.”
“It’s pretty.”
“Am I pretty?”
“Yes, you are pretty.”
Sadly, we are still having these conversations, even after marriage. I wish I could be as fully actualized as I pretend…but there it is; women have been subjugated to this terror for so long I think it has been engrained in our genes, if not the environment.
But the environment does not help, does it? I’m still getting yelled at about the haircut from Mom…”You look so unFEMININE when you chop your hair!”…as though appearing strong and assertive are negatives…
Oh, I’m totally taking up all your comment space. I apologize for the rant…the poorly edited rant. Just tell Helena that she is too young to worry about girls/boys/etc. She need only think of her elfin heritage, and make sure she tucks her wings in at night as she slumbers, lest too much pixie dust float away, and she awakes as just another girl.
What makes a girl? What makes a woman? Children don’t have the secondary sex characteristics that more readily distinguish adults. Clothing and hair styles can serve that function, as do names very often.
We are not without gender. It’s an identifier just like someone’s name identifies them. If your daughter is upset by people mistaking her for a boy, then maybe, it would be helpful to help the “stupid” people to more easily/visually understand that she is a girl. Remove these upsetting reactions from her life, rather than try to take on society.
If it really doesn’t matter, then let everyone’s hair be long and entreat your son to wear a dress from time to time.
Why is it that when people want to challenge you, they cower behind the shield of their anonymity?
Well said. (Both the original post and the retort to your anonymous friend.)
I’m so accustomed to people confusing Max for a girl that I rarely correct them anymore.
sorry, didn’t see the pulpit
Helena is gorgeous, inside and out.
My son is seven and up until he was about 4, he proudly gravitated toward pink, played with dolls as well as trains and seemed happily oblivious to all the constraints of our culture.
Then he turned 5. I don’t know what happened, because it didn’t come from me, but there was sudden opposition to all things “girl”.
Keep fighting the good fight and Helena will come to know that being a girl means a hell of a lot more than being “pretty”.
If you haven’t read “Growing a Girl” you should. Society’s assumptions based on gender are thoroughly ingrown — to the point where people talk differently to a fetus they think is male than one they think is female. A gender-neutral society, where each individual’s strengths are respected, is a long way off.
Both my girls chose really short haircuts at various points. L did it in 2nd grade, and absolutely hated being mistaken for a boy. She quickly asked to get her ears pierced. I agreed and it did solve the problem. Of course, when all the other second grade girls asked their moms, I got some dirty looks, but nothing serious!
L only went for the short cut once.
My younger daughter made the leap in 3rd grade, and has stuck with a very short cut for about a year. She also favors t-shirts and athletic pants and shorts. She thinks its hysterical when folks mistake her for a boy. A few months back we visited my sister in Dallas, and went shopping in a store full of cheap imports. The girls each had the princely sum of $20 to spend. E wandered around in sweats and a t-shirt, carrying an $8 tiara, as she looked for other things to buy. A true Texan male, about 60 years old, lean and strong looking, with clean jeans, a large buckle, cowboy shirt and hat, and a swagger that seemed to come from a strong, ranch life, approached me. In a voice that was tinged with something like horror he said “M’aam, your son has a tiara!” I paused, smiled sweetly, and said “Yes, I know.” E loves to tell that story. It makes us laugh hysterically. That poor guy probably chalks it up to a bunch of wild northerners grooming their kids for “a homosexual lifestyle.”
Good luck working through this with your girl. And again, read “Growing a Girl.”
Dear Rosie Reader -
Thank you for your comment and the book recommendation — I am off to the library!
Helena too CHOSE her haircut. In fact, she told the haircutter before she told me and the hair cutting person came to me looking worried for my okay. She hates to have her snarls combed out and her hair washed and short hair made sense when she saw how easy Daniel had it.
I don’t want to “take on” society via my children as such (although that’s a whole other post). I do, however, want them to be free to be who they are and make choices that make sense without reference to girlness or boyness.
Oh that is just so tough. I have three little girls and, since they were all bald until about two (well at least the older two, the baby is bald and about to turn one) and since I favored blues also, we got plenty of boy comments. My oldest thinks short hair is boy hair too – I’ve tried to point out women she knows with short hair, but I think it’s gone in one ear and out the other.
I wasn’t the girliest of girls and, though I had very long hair, it was always kept in two Laura Ingalls braids, which I loved because they were killer weapons. My girls love the pink and frills and princesses. I look forward to the day that I can tell them the REAL story of the little mermaid and the not so subtle patriarchal themes found within.
Well, I’m rambling. But very sympathetic
Helena is beautiful. I tried to get my daughter to cut her hair short because she hates brushing her hair and because she truly looks prettier with it short. She gets hysterical if I mention it.
It’s funny what a response was garnered about..of all things…HAIR. Now, not to poo-poo your post, but I wonder…will there ever be a time when women are not qualified by a hair style or hair length?
It starts too soon, too soon.
And this Anonymous person has essentially proved a point about WHY we still have discussions about hair and gender. Sheesh.
You women need something else to think about. How about nuclear proliferation? How about how women, as the main consumers of diamond jewelry, are destroying the lives of Africans trapped by mining?
Just a thought, or will you keep tossing your hair around?
I think her hair looks very pretty. When I was a small girl I went through a little phase of only wanting to wear dresses so no-one would think I was a boy. I think on a camping trip I’d worn jeans and a jumper(sweater) and might have had short hair, and was mistaken for a boy (I don’t have exceptionally ‘feminine’ features). I don’t think it matters in any long term sense, this gender mistakeness, but it can be embarassing. Not all adults can pick gender in kids without cues like colour, or motifs, and we *do* identify and interact with eachother with gender as a component, why not?
Sigh.
I can’t imagine the pressure of reaising a girl. You are like wonderwoman to me stunts.
Hannah and I went through the exact same thing when she had an unfortunate haircut (which looked very much like Helena’s). I’d kept her hair fairly short, but “girly” short – until the day we had someone who left her looking just that boyish. She cried. She sniffled. She answered people angrily, and expected me to do the same (I couldn’t, because, like you, I just knew people were stupid, lol). It grew. Thank God.
In a way, though, I think the universe was getting her back for the comment she made to me one day not long before that, while all of us were in the car: “Mommy, I wish you were pretty like Barbie.”
Grr.
It’s been a while since you posted this but I just saw this post through search results on google. My 5 year old daughter, Zoe, just had get her hair cut in a buzz cut due to another child giving her a hair cut (needless to say I was pretty pissed off when my daughter has to go to school the next day with a buzz cut and that little girl still has her shoulder length hair). It has been a week since this happened and there are comments everywhere we go. I think when people see a child with a buzz cut and a pink dress that it causes them to comment so I am actually going to start dressing her in non gender specific clothes so that she doesn’t get picked on as much.