Boys Will be Boys

This piece was written summer 2014.

The conversation in the boys bedroom last night while they were meant to be going to sleep, was who got to be Anna from the movie Frozen. I felt impressed that Disney has finally managed to create a heroine who is universally appealing. I would like to think that it also means we've come a long way in our perceptions of gender norms. But raising two boys has left me with a different experience.

In my eldest son, Isa, I noticed a sensitivity to these norms from a young age and they always took me off guard because we had never mentioned them in our home. They came up when he started daycare and was immersed in a social setting where they became important. He started daycare at the age of three and before that time he had always liked putting on nail polish. I never offered it to him, but when I was putting it on myself he would want some too, and I would oblige him. I could be wrong, but doubt his thought process was “I am going to put on this pink polish as a statement to the world that I am not bound to their expectations of my masculinity or fear that I might be 'turned gay'”, but more likely “oooooh, pretty colours, me want some too.” But that soon stopped once daycare started, and now he is certain to remind his younger brother Zayn, who still likes wearing nail polish, that he isn't a girl.

So when Isa spent the other morning walking around the house in a pink sparkly cape singing “Let It Go” in his full voice, I approached with trepidation. I made no reference to the cape. I asked for permission to film him sing and permission to post the video on Facebook. When he left the house for the park still wearing the cape I was even more surprised. The whole way people told him nicely that they liked his cape. One woman, an older woman (a psychotherapist) told his father that she “appreciated his self-expression”. This comment was of course well-meaning, but it puzzled me. What exactly was Isa expressing by wearing a pink sparkly cape? His feminine side? By that token, when he wears his Spiderman costume, is he expressing his masculine side? Is he not simply appreciating something that he has witnessed in the world around him and imitating it?

There is nothing odd or special about a little girl who plays with trucks. If she wants to dress up as Spiderman for Halloween, it is not only perfectly acceptable, it is lauded. A boy dressing up as a fairy is- eccentric; questionble; out of the norm; fringe. This points to two things within our society that concern me: 1) The feminine or feminized qualities are still considered lesser and therefore not appropriate for boys to explore 2) boys are not permitted the same freedom of exploration as girls. Girls doing what was traditionally meant only for boys empowers them. But boys doing what is traditionally meant for girls emasculates them. Why is that? Why is doing boy things a step up for girls, but the opposite a step down for boys?

I have no issue with boys being boys and girls being girls. Male and female have different qualities. We have different bodies, different hormones, different cognitive wiring. That's fine, vive la différence. But tying those differences down to static cultural expectations is not healthy for anyone, male or female. Why are we still so stuck on assigning genders to inanimate objects and colours? Trucks don't have penises. Pink doesn't have a vagina. It is important for boys to play uninhibitedly with “girl” toys for a number of reasons: because it expands their world. Children are explorers, they're not judging and condemning things the way we are. To them, the world is new, and everything has something to teach them. Why give that freedom to our girls and not our boys?

Also, because many toys designed with girls in mind focus on nurturing; taking care of babies, animals; they are about relationship building; friendship, sharing, forgiveness. Giving boys the opportunity to explore these things will help them grow into nurturing fathers, compassionate partners and trustworthy friends.

Another important reason: it helps them to relate to girls. It gives them the chance to explore what girls like, to see the fun, the value, the importance. This cannot be underestimated in its potential; those boys will soon be men, those girls women. What better gift can we give our future husbands and wives, lovers, friends, coworkers, than a healthy understanding and appreciation for what is important to the other? What better way to help men understand women than to give them free reign from a young age to explore what girls like? This will not emasculate them, it will expand their consciousness. It will teach them greater empathy and awareness, both of others and themselves. Empowering boys to play with toys designed for girls is not a danger – it is a necessity.