The strangeness of kinders

This feminist blogging business can be a bit soul-destroying at times. So I'm going to take a self-indulgent ramble through a topic that never fails to cheer me up: my kids.

Being austere (pro)feminist leftie types, my partner and I have tried to raise our kids to be accepting of diverse gender identities. With my daughter M, now seven, it was straightforward enough. She's immersed in the same pink hideousness as most of her small female colleagues; but she'll just as happily turn to a kids' book about physics or maths, not realising these have traditionally been areas of male accomplishment. Maybe those divisive days are gone, and she'll move freely between My Little Pony and calculus all her life (although I hope she'll grow out of MLP sooner rather than later).

And then there's Boy. Nearly three, Boy has been difficult since the moment of conception. Relentlessly loud and boisterous, Boy is just so darn boyish. Despite having had the same upbringing as his sister, Boy has gravitated to stereotypically male things since he was old enough to gravitate. He loves cars and balls and mud and being loud. He's a bundle of irrepressible physical energy, jumping on the couch and throwing stuff. Every now and again he feels the urge to pull my hair or dig his wee fingernails into my face. (I'm sporting a scratch on one cheek, and the dorky-looking one on the tip of my nose has only just healed.) Boy truly doesn't have a malicious bone in his little body - he just seems to get flesh-gougingly excited about life from time to time.

I've stopped pondering the nature vs nurture debate, because it doesn't shed much light on what I should actually do as a feminist parent, trying to raise my kids with a certain set of values. Here's what I've concluded. There's nothing wrong with being a rough-and-tumble, full of beans, loud little boy. What would be mistaken would be thinking this is the only way a boy ought to behave, that there's something 'wrong' with the boy who isn't noisy and physical, that it's always appropriate to be boisterous, or that the things girls stereotypically do are in some way inferior to boys' activities.

I guess I'm trying to raise a Renaissance Boy. We spend time jumping in puddles and playing raucous games together, but we also do a fair bit of reading and jigsaw puzzling. Just this morning, I found the little guy singing 'Forest of Feelings' from the Care Bears movie, very earnestly, to the television. He'll yell angrily when his sister refuses to share her Polly Pocket dolls with him. Perhaps best of all, when he's inflicted a particularly deep gouge on my face, he can be relied on to give me a sheepish hug. And whether nature or nurture served up that crazy little personality, I continue to love Boy with all the partial intensity that only a mother wearing rose-tinted spectacles over her one eye can muster.

Toys for boys

Today Sideswipe shared this doozy:

I wonder which group the makers thought was of lower toy plane sports aerospace product construction capability: girl students or low grade students?

And when I went looking for kitchen toys for Wriggly to play with in the kitchen instead of the actual grater and real glass bowls, I discovered this:

On the left we have the Pots & Pans set, in manly blue with bright yellow and red accents. On the right we have Kitchen Utensils, from the Girls Only range, in pink, magenta and lilac. Looks to me like it's the same little girl pictured on the front of both? Good to know though that boys can cook, but only girls can bake. Sigh.

Quick hit: Fast and er dirty

In Stuff's sports section:

Sebastian Vettel and the Red Bull car he calls 'Kate's Dirty Sister' have given Formula One championship leader Jenson Button plenty to think about ahead of Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix.

The eye-catching moniker came to light after Vettel powered through rain, spray and treacherous standing water to hand his team a breakthrough first victory at the Shanghai circuit last weekend.

"Like a ship, a car should be named after a girl as it's sexy," the 21-year-old German explained to reporters when asked about the name stuck on the dashboard of his car.

"My original car was called Kate. But then it got smashed at the opening race in Australia. So we called this one Kate's Dirty Sister because it is more aggressive and faster."

Click through for the rest, which is actually about motor racing.

Most of the article is about sport. But the beginning, and the headline (Faster, more aggressive: Meet 'Kate's dirty sister') are about the car's name. Head, meet desk.

Shiny red racing car helmet curtly tipped to Cynical C, via Facebook.

Girlfruit

Me: These dresses with scratch and sniff fruit are great. Are there any scratch and sniff clothes for boys?
Shop Assistant: No, I'm not sure what you'd do scratch and sniff for a boy.
Me: ...
Shop Assistant: Hmmmm, maybe apples? They might be gender neutral.
Me: Ah, yeah, apples. I'll just take the dress thanks.

This is not a story in which I come up with an undeniably witty, yet subtly consciousness-raising, retort. I thought about writing it that way, but that would be lying. Like most mortals, I think of the right thing to say several hours after the right time to say it has passed.

But I'm intrigued by this attitude that there is girlfruit. Strawberries and grapes are apparently sternly in the girlfruit camp, as they were the two options for the scratch and sniff dresses, all of which came in girly pastel shades (a mid purple was the manliest option).

Apples, as already mentioned, may be gender neutral. I'm not sure whether all apples are androgynous, or just the green ones, seeing as how on a previous occasion, at a different children's clothing store, I was informed that red socks were without doubt girlclothes.

Perhaps I'm thinking about this all wrong. Maybe all fruit is girlfruit, but all vegetables are boyveg? I mean really, when you consider it; courgettes, celery, carrots, parsnips, marrows and silverbeet are all a little, well, phallic, don't you think?