mothers of sons, rejoice
for you may never have to have the following conversation:
Scene: The grocery store, toiletries aisle.
The Bee: (picking up a can of Nair) "What's this, Mommy?"
Me: "Oh, some women use that to take the hair off their legs."
The Bee: "Sometimes, the kids at school make fun of me, because I have so much hair on my legs. It hurts my feelings." (skips off to find juice boxes)
Me: "$%#!*(^ the patriarchy! She's six, people!"
Scene: The grocery store, toiletries aisle.
The Bee: (picking up a can of Nair) "What's this, Mommy?"
Me: "Oh, some women use that to take the hair off their legs."
The Bee: "Sometimes, the kids at school make fun of me, because I have so much hair on my legs. It hurts my feelings." (skips off to find juice boxes)
Me: "$%#!*(^ the patriarchy! She's six, people!"
posted by landismom @ 5:45 PM
5 Comments:
At 7:45 PM,
Melissa said…
Well, crap.
Seriously, that's insane.
Also, I remember going to buy Nair once when I was 12 and being mortified to present it to the male cashier, because it HAD TO DO WITH MY BODY and was therefore excruciatingly embarrassing.
At 8:15 PM,
Melissa said…
HHHmmm. poor Bee! that's distressing. i remember going swimming with some girls when i was 10 or 11 and being totally, completely mortified because i had hairy legs & they didn't. i remember trying to hide them under my towel. what's so bad about hair anyway? remeber when the media crucified Julia Robers for having (very) hairy armpits on the red carpet? i LOVED her for that.
At 6:50 PM,
landismom said…
The thing about this that made me so upset was that I feel like it practically takes away her right to decide whether or not to shave her legs. I remember having the idea of shaving my legs enter my brain at approximately the same time that I began to understand that women didn't do it for political reasons. And she's being denied that option--I can explain it to her, to a certain extent, but how much can a six-year-old really understand about oppression through societal expectations?
At 6:02 PM,
... said…
my daughter said the same thing to me last year (she's eight) and it nearly broke my heart. she said that some of her friends called her "monkey arms". the poor little duck is white blonde and yes, she has a bit of hair on her arms, but its practically transparent!
i was so upset and wanted to go pinch every one of those nasty children. instead i told her that they were being silly and that she had lovely little arms.
she hasn't brought it up since. children (other children) can be such monsters!
At 10:33 PM,
Cataclysm said…
This posting has bothered me for a couple of days since I read it...
Part of me thinks, "Ahhh, the double edged sword of cultural values". I'm not sure I'll get around to teaching Rian all the good things like not to kill or steal (heck I can barely remember to brush his teeth) and then there's what happened to Bee... The pressure for social conformity starts so young.
Part of what I like about the Drive here in Vancouver is that I hope for the most part, Rian will spend his early life with like-minded kids... I'm not expecting harmony all the time but not unnecessarily harsh social situations. Is it possible or desirable to shield them too much? Ack...
There's also the pecking order and kids trying to make others feel bad - I wonder if bullying has gotten worse or whether we're all just talking about it more.
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