Tag Archives: gender roles

10 Things I Do Not Own and 5 Things I Do, or, Messing With Stereotypes

10 Things I Do Not Own (and Yet Still Manage to Be a Woman)

1. Razors. Or Nair. Or wax. Or any form of depilatory.

2. Bathroom scale. (We do, however, own a kitchen scale. The Man uses it to bake bread.)

3. Wrinkle cream. Or cellulite cream. Or “age-defying” anything.

4. Underwire bra. (I was going to say “bra” at all, but I do technically own a couple soft/sports bras. I just never wear them, unless all my tanks are dirty. And sometimes, even when all my tanks are dirty? I don’t wear anything under my shirt at all.)

4.5 Matching bra and underwear set. Or anything that could be called “lingerie”.

5. Diet books. Or weight-loss cook books. Or calorie lists. Or anything from Weight Watchers.

6. High heels. (After shopping for this year’s Halloween, I do now own a pair. Since my Halloween party plans fell through, however, I have yet to wear them outside the house. Or in the house, except for ten minutes the day I bought them.)

6. Pantyhose/tights. (Though at 5’10″ and 300 pounds I likely couldn’t find any to fit me even if I tried.)

7. Hair spray. Or gel. Or mousse.1 Or a blow dryer. Or curling iron. Or flat iron. Or any hair-related appliance more complicated than a brush. (Though I do own two of those, and a comb.)

8. Purse. (When I say this, people ask me where I keep my Stuff, to which I reply, what stuff? so: )

8.5: Stuff. (I do own a knitting bag, though. Which holds all of my knitting stuff. And, since women’s clothing manufacturers decided Women Don’t Need Pockets, not even in comfy unstylish jeans, for fuck’s sake, it also holds my wallet. Except for when it doesn’t.)

9. Diamond ring, earring, necklace, bracelet…

9.5 Ear piercings in which one might wear diamond earrings (or not). Or, technically I did, for about six months when I was 20. Now I have tiny pin-point scars.

10. Anything that has ever been declared “this season’s must have”. Ever. Not even was-declared-so-five-years-before-I-bought-it, as far as I know.

And yet, somehow, I am still a woman.

5 Things I Do Own (and Yet Still Manage to Advocate for Gender Equality)

1. Makeup that costs more than $25 for one bottle. (Though I must confess, I’ve worn it all of twice. But that has far more to do with laziness than lack of slightly-more-often desire.)

2. A dress. More than one!

3. Knitting supplies. Lots of knitting supplies. Which I use to make things. For other people. Even for men.

4. High heels. (And I’m so looking for someplace to wear them. Any suggestions?)

5. A corset. (I used to have a strapless suede bustier, but the dang cat puked on it, and it was never the same.)

And yet, somehow, I am still feminist2 and advocate for gender equality.

***

The thing is, stereotypes are shit. If you don’t want to shave your legs or armpits or anywhere else, don’t. If you want to wax your genitals, go for it (though, um, OW?). If you don’t particularly want to go along with societally-imposed gender roles, but can’t afford the spoons or loss of social capital or risk to your job or the custody of your children or your life (especially if the gender assigned to you is not your gender, and especially if your gender is not even recognized by wider culture), then you have my sympathy and my solidarity in working to expand the options available to you.

You aren’t not-your-gender because you say “no thanks” to things society says your gender is supposed to own or do, and you aren’t not-a-gender-activist because you say “yes please” (or “fuck it, fine”) to any of those things either. It’s well and good to have conversations about the pressures people3 are under to conform to gender expectations, but if the end result of the conversation is not an increase in the options available and in acceptance for diversity in choices, then we’re doing something wrong.

So, if it’s your thing, shave your legs, skip your pits, buzz your hair, put on a slinky strappy dress and comfy flat shoes — and come dance with me.4

  1. Or, for that matter, shampoo. Baking soda/apple cider vinegar. Look it up. ↩
  2. An adjective meaning “acts mostly in accord with the radical idea that women are people.” ↩
  3. Both women and men — not to mention the pressure for everyone to neatly fall into the limited categories of “woman” or “man”. ↩
  4. Or invite me over for D&D. I could go either way. ↩
31 Comments | Posted on 17 November 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy | Tags: , , , , , ,
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My parenting style did not make my motherhood a prison; my society did

I am slightly ambivalent (though mostly loatheful) to bring more publicity to this frustrating piece, but let me tell you about an essay by Erica Jong published on Saturday in the Wall Street Journal. In Mother Madness1, Jong manages to sweepingly, and contradictorily, indict “narcissistic” celebrities, adoptive parents, biological parents, parents who use nannies, attachment parents, helicopter parents, environmentalist parents, perfectionist parents, political parents, and politically inactive parents — and she engages in this non-stop mother-hate while professing a desire to make mothers feel less guilty and release us from “rules”.

Elephant? What elephant?

Again and again Jong mentions-in-passing the central problem of modern motherhood, and the key to any real solutions, but again and again she brushes it off:

In agrarian societies, perhaps wearing your baby was the norm, but today’s corporate culture scarcely makes room for breast-feeding on the job, let alone baby-wearing.

In the absence of societal adjustment to the needs of children, parents have to revise their own schedules.

If you are busy raising children without societal help and trying to earn a living during a recession, you don’t have much time to question and change the world that you and your children inhabit.

Here’s an idea: how about we change society. At one point Jong goes on to say “Our foremothers might be appalled by how little we have transformed the world of motherhood.” — indeed, I believe she’s right. But moreover, I’d say they’d be appalled by how little desire feminists such as she show for doing so, at least in mother-hating essays such as this.

“Natural” and “attachment” parenting “[is] a prison for mothers.”

Jong mocks attachment parents2 with particular bile, but from where I’m standing, attachment parents (defined loosely — no more loosely or vaguely than Jong does — for this purpose as those who value child-caregiver entwinement, including valuing breastfeeding) have done more for parents than those who attack them:

It is3 attachment parents who are working to improve pumping break laws. It is attachment parents who are agitating for flex time and paid parental leave and job sharing options. It is attachment parents who are responsible for legal protections for nursing in public. It is attachment parents who are engaging in concrete actions to try to change society to help women and children and parents.

Are there misogynists who call themselves attachment parents? Absolutely — much as there are misogynists (among whom I include mother-blamers), who call themselves feminists. Are most of those who call themselves attachment parents — or who would fit under the definition given above — apolitical, and striving simply to live their life as best they can muddle through it (who are, indeed, following her penultimate pronouncement: “Do the best you can.”)? Assuredly, as are most parents who do not align with attachment parenting.

I could rant for years4 on the problems with prescriptivist parenting, on the sexism and classism and racism and everything-else-ism in natural family living and attachment parenting advocacy. Although I do, indeed, own a copy of Sears’ The Baby Book, I have never lent it nor recommended it without at the least a five-minute caveat (more than once an hour-long rant) on its misogyny and the many, many ways it perpetuates kyriarchy in all its forms.

Which makes it different from any other baby book not at all.

Perfectly non-kyriarchal parenting styles and other mythical beasts

Not once in this diatribe against everything wrong with mothers today5 is there a consideration of the ways in which other styles of parenting have treated women, nor their role in perpetuating kyriarchy even while seemingly “emancipating” women. Attachment parenting (or possibly helicopter parenting, or natural parenting, or perfectionist parenting — it’s never quite clear whether Jong recognizes any differences in these styles, nor the ways in which they are often contradictory) is a prison, we are informed — but what of (for lack of a better term) mainstream parenting? What of the baby-trainers? What of the parenting of two plus decades ago, pre this purported “orgy of motherphilia”? Are these philosophies, in fact, any better suited to empower women in the long term? I would argue they are not at all, though they might be harmful in different ways, but Jong assumes their superiority without examination.

The point that Jong misses — and in fact herself proves — is that there is no way for mothers to win. Stay home with your children? You are imprisoned. Hire a nanny? You’re taking a mother away from her children.6 Figure out how to take your kid on the road with you? You’re only pretending to have it all, as you “thrust [your] babies into the arms of siblings or daddies.” She supposes to speak on behalf of mothers, while talking about us in terms that make my skin crawl, remind me strongly of every other mother-blaming pundit out there, and leave me feeling anything but supported and heard.

My own life

Neither my child nor my parenting made for me a prison: I choose my parenting not out of a desire for perfection — a perfect parent I am not, nor strive to be — nor to make of it a sand pile to bury my head in7; I choose it because there are certain practices in infancy — expectations that new humans have — that are, I would argue, “encoded in our DNA”, and although humans are wonderfully malleable, and will put up with an inordinate amount of variation and deviation from those expectations8, routinely asking our children to do so on so many levels does them — nor, in the long run, as they choose our retirement homes and lead our countries and usher the next generation of our genetics into the world, us — no favors.

What makes for me a prison is not my child nor my choices to breastfeed or babywear or use cloth diapers9 or — I am sure Jong would gasp in horror — elimination communication: it is that my coparent had to return to work at three weeks postpartum, and thereafter lacked any further paid time off until he was able to accrue more. It is that I, parent of a car-adverse child, lacked public transit options beyond a once-every-hour bus. It is that had I been able to afford daycare — for it is not publicly funded — when he was younger, I would have been unlikely to find a place knowledgeable enough to care for a diaper-free baby. It is that the school I enrolled in when he was a year and a half old was not eligible for publicly-funded loans or grants, leaving me with higher debts and fewer borrower’s protections, because of its flexibility in class schedule and course load — the very reason I chose it. These are not inherent problems with my parenting choices; these are failures of my society to support parents at all.

“Do the best you can.” But don’t do that.

In the end, I refuse to go along with Jong’s acceptance of the status quo, when the status quo says that I must choose between meeting my needs and meeting my child’s. Jong would wave away a child’s need for human milk10, for proximity to stable caregivers, but it makes those needs no less real. I wholeheartedly agree that guilt for the daily compromises and imperfections of good-enough parents does no one good, least of all parents; but blame for our own imprisonment, when we are fighting not only to survive but to counter the world’s hatred of us and our children? I fail to see what good that does us either.

My parenting style did not make my motherhood a prison, my society did; and attacks such as this only make its walls stronger.

————–

  1. And thanks so much for that casual ableism. ↩
  2. Though many of the traits and habits she mentions are more characteristic of philosophies on the opposite end of the spectrum from attachment parenting, merely overlap with attachment parenting as in a Venn diagram, or may be found equally among nearly all styles. ↩
  3. Largely though not entirely, and this caveat follows throughout. ↩
  4. Wait, I already have. ↩
  5. By which, apparently, she means middle+ class mostly-privileged women, for the needs and desires of so many who do not fit that limited mold — women still fighting to keep their babies, or keep their children alive, or who would give anything to quit their menial jobs to stay home with their kids — seem not to be her concern at all. ↩
  6. “…impoverished immigrant nannies who help to raise our kids while their own kids are left at home with grandparents.” ↩
  7. “Our obsession with parenting is an avoidance strategy. It allows us to substitute our own small world for the world as a whole.” Because obsessive parenting and attachment parenting are the same thing, of course. ↩
  8. See biologically appropriate parenting. ↩
  9. If our autonomy is so fragile that it can be eliminated via the choice to use not-significantly-more-work reusable diapering options, that says far more about our autonomy than about the supposed superiority of disposables. ↩
  10. And on an individual level, I might agree — in that formula is adequate nourishment to allow most individual infants to thrive — but when entire societies substitute artificial milks for the real deal, we can absolutely see the negative ramifications. Yes, even in industrialized countries such as the USA. ↩
33 Comments | Posted on 8 November 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Kyriarchy, Parenting | Tags: , ,
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The Boychick’s Bookshelf: The Paper Bag Princess

Welcome to The Boychick’s Bookshelf! In this series, I review children’s books of interest to those who want to raise children free from and opposed to kyriarchy. These reviews will focus on books which showcase stories and lives beyond the dominant culture of white straight middle-class families, or which contain explicitly anti-kyriarchy messages (anti-racism, anti-ableism, anti-sexism, anti-heterosexism, anti-cissexism, anti-violence, anti-colonialization, and so on).

The Paper Bag Princess

The Story

“Elizabeth was a beautiful princess”, engaged to the snobbily-drawn Ronald — both of whom appear to be prepubescent — when a dragon comes, burns down her castle (and burns off her clothes! — at which illustration the Boychick accurately points out “she has no nipples!”), and whisks away her fiancé. Elizabeth dons the closest thing to a garment she has left — a paper bag — and sets off to find and rescue Ronald. When she tracks down the dragon’s lair (by following the trail of horse bones), she tricks the dragon with fawning praise into using up all his fire and then flying around the world so fast he promptly collapses asleep. The dragon now unarmed and unarousable, she slips past and frees the prince. Rather than being appropriately appreciative, Ronald declares her a mess, and tells her to come back after getting cleaned up when she is once again “a real princess”. Elizabeth retorts that his appearance is that of “a real prince”, but he is “a bum.” The final scene shows her skipping away — happily alone, still clothed in her paper bag –  into the sunset, and we learn “They didn’t get married after all.”

Intended Audience

Elizabeth and Ronald are both white, blond, and (obviously) class privileged — at least until Elizabeth’s castle burns down — so the annoyingly usual expected audience of middle class white families applies. More specifically, The Paper Bag Princess seems aimed at white girls who are already familiar with the princess narrative, but I wouldn’t say that’s necessary: while the Boychick hadn’t yet been exposed to that narrative, it didn’t hinder his enjoyment of the book.

Changes in the telling

My main problem with The Paper Bag Princess — apart from the white, blond characters — is when Elizabeth declares Ronald to be “a bum”. Although the meaning of “bum” as “buttocks” predates that of “tramp”/homeless/lazy person (and let’s just pause a moment to marvel and be disgusted at the conflation of “homeless” and “lazy”), and outside the USA the bottom definition reigns supreme (if, thanks to US cultural colonialism, not exclusive), its primary use in the USA is lazy/homeless, particularly in the “you are a” construction. (In fact, the Boychick protests when I use bum for butt — it’s the one Britishism he actively rejects.) And as long as that strong implication of, and conflation of, “lazy hobo” is there, I am not willing to use it as an insult. Thus in our readings, we’ve changed it to any number of other insults, including jerk, butthead, or — my Doctor Who fanatic’s favorite — “giant eyeball“.

My only other concern with the book, which I can’t do anything about, is the way Elizabeth uses flattery to outwit the dragon. I love that she defeats him nonviolently, with only her intelligence and words, but it bothers me a bit that she uses such a stereotypically feminine way of doing it. “Is it true” she asks, that he can burn up ten forests/fly around the world in ten seconds? And then, when he does, she plays every bit of the easily-impressed femme and proclaims it “magnificent”. While I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with what she did, I do wish that she could have used her quick wit to out-think the dragon in some other way, if only to show girls that relying (even in such a fabulously subversive manner) on the tropes of femininity isn’t the only way to get what they want.

Right on!

The above caveats aside, I adore the messages of this book: intelligence and character are far more important than appearance, vanity will lose you your lunch (or post-castle-entrée snack), don’t stick around with someone who can’t appreciate you for who you are, girls are entirely capable of doing the rescuing, and the princess doesn’t need to end up with the prince to be happy. It is, essentially, a second wave feminist wet-dream of a kids’ book, and I love it for that, even as I acknowledge its concurrent problems.

But does it appeal? The Boychick’s take

The Boychick really likes The Paper Bag Princess, though I will say that seems to have more to do with the dragon than with the feminist messages. His absolute favorite part is first whispering and then yelling “Hey dragon!” with Elizabeth, as she checks that he’s well and truly out of it before freeing Ronald — I would not read this book with him any time I needed him to be especially quiet! But it seems to be just right for the stage he’s at: enough of a story to be engaging, but not so long and involved he loses track.

Buy it, Consider it, Skip it, or Compost it?

Consider it. (Link goes to Powell’s; or buy through Amazon.) The white leading characters, the use of “bum” as a derogative (again, given that we are USian and it doesn’t really mean arse to the Boychick), and Elizabeth’s use of flattery stop me from offering it my highest rating, but I do still love and recommend it. And, as demonstrated by how involved the Boychick gets, it is simply fun, and as willing as I am to share with him not-so-fun selections, to have one that is so upbeat that also carries excellent messages I find worth the imperfections.

Your Take — and Your Chance!

Have you read The Paper Bag Princess? What do you think, and what do your kids think? What other books with strong female protagonists and subversion of the princess narrative do you know of, and would you recommend them?

AND! Because I was sent a copy by a fabulous reader (thank you!) after buying one myself and before taking it off my wish list, I have an extra — which means one of you gets to have a copy. Simply comment below to the effect of “please enter me!” by 11:59pm Pacific Daylight Time (UTC – 7) Friday the 27th of August 2010, and I will draw a name at random the next day. Winner will be contacted via the email used to comment, and will provide me with shipping information.

Anyone, anywhere in the world is welcome to enter — I only ask you to refrain if you already own a copy.

———————–

Purchases made through the Powell’s and Amazon links offered here support this blog and compensate — quite minimally — my time and work as a blogger. I encourage you to support local, independent booksellers whenever possible, but if you’re to order online anyway, why not support an independent blogger?

Have a book you want me to review? Suggestions are always welcome, and books sent to me via my Wish List receive priority review status and are an excellent way to support and encourage the Boychick’s Bookshelf project.

49 Comments | Posted on 21 August 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, The Boychick's Bookshelf | Tags: , , ,
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Say Something Good

Welcome to the May Carnival of Natural Parenting: Role model

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have waxed poetic about how their parenting has inspired others, or how others have inspired them. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

***
Women, generally, have a hard time saying good things about ourselves.

There’s an excellent reason for this: when we do, we are, invariably, attacked. We are women, and although we are apparently supposed to do all the work that runs the world (except make any of the decisions outside of the house or the market), we are not supposed to be proud. We are always, always supposed to make ourselves smaller (belittling means “to make little”!). We are always supposed to demure. We are always supposed to put ourselves down, beat ourselves up, and point out our shortcomings. We can never be allowed to say something unqualifiedly good about ourselves.

And I know this. I know this, I know this is a function of kyriarchy, I know this is a product of sexism, I know that the crazy in my brain latches on to this social injunction and yells that there’s something wrong with me if I ever so much as hint that I’m good at something without a shrug or an excuse or a “but”.

But I am a woman, and my brain is even more messed up than most women’s, and I find it really hard to say good things about myself. Not because I don’t rock — I do, and I know it — but because saying something good opens me up to accusations of pride (starting with my own damned brain!), to being belittled, to getting knocked down a peg.

So this month’s Carnival of Natural Parenting topic? Is really hard. I want to write about how I’m not all that. I want to write about how I fail so often. I want to write about all the people who have inspired me. At best, I wanted to say “Aw shucks, I can’t do that” and open the thread for y’all to fawn over me and tell me how great I am and how I’ve changed your lives and get you to write my post for me. (Because women are allowed to do that, we’re allowed to blush and say “Aw shucks” and giggle appreciatively when other people say good things about us, but heaven forbid we do it ourselves.)

But y’know what? I am good at what I do. And part of what I do is inspire people.

I figure out what teachers, textbooks, “experts” are saying, and I turn around and help others understand it. I write in language that is engaging, and illuminating, and sometimes heartbreakingly, breathtakingly beautiful. I portray the nuance of life, and this parenting gig, in ways that resonate with people, that show pain without wallowing, that illuminate ideals without shaming, that are, y’know, inspiring.

Y’all sometimes tell me that I’ve touched you. That I’ve made you feel less alone, or I’ve shown you a new way of looking at something, or I’ve helped you understand something that never made sense before. I’ve helped some of you yell less, breastfeed longer, let go of guilt, defy gender dictates, have more fun with your kids, and feel better about yourselves as parents.

And I’ve done it by doing this: sitting here, typing about the crazy in my head and the ideas I’ve gotten from other people, and the ways I’ve failed, and the ways I’ve tried to hate myself less when I’ve failed.

I wish I could come up with a beautiful, specific story of how I inspired someone to nurse in public, or convinced someone not to circumcise their kid, or taught someone to recognize their baby’s elimination signals, or gotten their kid comfortable in a back carry for the first time. And I’m even pretty sure I’ve done most of those things. But I’ve done it by being me, and doing this: I live my life, I parent my kid, and I blog about it. Sometimes people tell me how that’s affected them, but mostly, they don’t. And that’s ok, I’m not in this for the accolades1.

So here’s your homework2, dear readers:

  • One, tell me something good about yourself. No “pretty goods”, no “buts”, no “other than”, no “comparatively”, no qualifiers of any kind3. Tell me something that you do well. Parenting, business, school, personal, whatever. It all counts here, even if our culture tells us only some achievements matter.
  • Two, tell someone else how they’ve inspired you. No, not me — I already know I’m the bee’s knees. If there’s someone out there who has inspired you by being themselves, by parenting the way they do, or by writing about it — tell them. Tell them in real specific detail, with quantifiers and adjectives and dates and numbers, so that they have a great story to tell that makes them look and feel as good as they are. So they don’t just think they’ve done some good in the world, they know, and next time someone asks them to tell a story of when they inspired someone else, they’ll find it that much easier to just do it and skip all the “aw shucks” and “but I’m not that greats”. You know they rock; tell them.

Go forth. Proclaim your badassery. Proclaim others’ badassery. Change the world.

***

Carnival of Natural Parenting -- Hobo Mama and Code Name: MamaVisit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

  1. Even if I am a feedback investment banker. ↩
  2. You didn’t think you were getting away without any, did you? ↩
  3. I will edit those out of any comments left — so, I suppose, if you need to to get it down, leave them in, but they’ll be gone by morning! ↩
21 Comments | Posted on 11 May 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy, Parenting | Tags: , , , , ,
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The Boychick’s Bookshelf: Being Friends

Welcome to The Boychick’s Bookshelf! In this series, I review children’s books of interest to parents who want to raise children free from and opposed to kyriarchy. These reviews will focus on books which showcase stories and lives beyond the dominant culture of white straight middle-class families, or which contain explicitly anti-kyriarchy messages (anti-racism, anti-ableism, anti-sexism, anti-heterosexism, anti-cissexism, anti-violence, anti-colonialization, and so on).

Being Friends

Karen Beaumont, pictures by Joy Allen

The Story

In a pleasantly rhyming first person narrative, we learn about two friends: one of whom, a white girl1, likes jeans and caps and cookies and hanging upside down, the other of whom, a black or multiracial girl, likes gowns and crowns and cake and spinning around, but, as the oft-repeated refrain says, they “both like being friends.”

The art is realistic and delightful, with enough to explore in each scene to engage the reader but simple enough to be easily taken in. As a pet lover, I enjoyed spotting the dog and the cat (the girls’ pets) on nearly every page.

Intended Audience

By placing the narrative in the point of view of the white friend, this book, however subtly, others the black friend, making it a story aimed more at middle class2 white families looking to encourage diversity than being a story by and for children of color.

That aside, I would highly recommend it, especially for girls. While they like doing different things, both the femme and the butch3 (the “princess” and the “chimpanzee”) are physically active (playing baseball, jumping on the bed, having pillow fights), academically engaged (“spelling C-A-T” and “counting 1, 2, 3″, and looking at the planets and stars with a telescope), artistic, and courageous (telling each other scary stories). Girls need to hear this message: that being “girly” or “tomboyish” means liking different clothes (and both are perfectly ok!), but it doesn’t have to limit the options of what we can do.

Changes in the Telling

The one page I would give much to be able to change is where the two friends express their “hate” for, respectively, peas and mushrooms, and their mutual desire for pepperoni pizza. I’ve tried to change this in the telling, but the Boychick has already learned to correct me with “hate” of vegetables. Since mushrooms and peas are two of the Boychick’s favorite foods, and he’s yet to have pizza without any vegetables on it (much less with pepperoni), I do not appreciate this book reinforcing the stereotype that kids don’t like veggies. (Some might not, but much as with gender stereotypes I’m convinced that cultural messages, such as this, play a far greater role than we generally acknowledge.)

Not something we can change, but I really wish there were a line explicitly acknowledging the races of the friends. “You are black and I am white” or “Your dad is black, mine is white, but both our moms are Jewish” or something that states what readers young and old will readily notice. Without this explication, the book becomes yet another brick in the “we4 don’t talk about race” wall that contributes to racism.

On the Bookshelf Because

Bought for the message of interracial friendship, kept for the messages gender expression diversity not limiting ability, enjoyed for the acknowledgment that everyone has both similarities and differences.

But Does It Appeal? The Boychick’s Take

I cannot tell you how much the Boychick likes this book. What’s more, even after reading it no less than three dozen times (between The Man and myself), we’re not yet sick of it either. The first day we had it, he wanted to read “the string book” (so called for the picture of the friends playing a string game on the cover) over and over again, and a week later, still requests it multiple times in a row. I think it’s safe to say the Boychick approves.

Buy it, Consider it, Skip it, or Compost it?

Consider it. The lack of explicit acknowledgement of race, the comments about food, and the white narrator stop me from wholeheartedly recommending it, but the positive messages on gender expression, the interracial friendship, and how much the Boychick simply adores it means you might want to consider adding it to your own bookshelf.

Your Take

Have you read Being Friends? What do you think, and what do your kids think? Are there other books with similar messages you prefer?

Note: This book was sent to us by a dear reader who purchased it off the Raising My Boychick wishlist.

  1. Nowhere in the text are the children’s genders identified, but the book jacket and reviews state, and the pictures imply, that the two friends are both girls ↩
  2. The children are pictured in a house or in a field, and always with abundant toys ↩
  3. Femme and butch are not my favorite words, but I’m not sure what better ones there are. ↩
  4. “We” meaning white folk. ↩
8 Comments | Posted on 7 May 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, The Boychick's Bookshelf | Tags: , , ,
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