At a school event last week, the woman sitting next to me - a neighbor, though not one I know all that well - wondered if I wanted to scrapbook with her daughter. "You are such a girly-girl!" she says. Huh? I must have looked puzzled because she elaborated, "It's not that you can't do sporty, but you are so girly.."
I'm still puzzling over this one. What is a girly girl? Are there only girly girls and sporty girls? What about the geeky girls? Somehow my interest in quantum mechanics (of which the neighbor is unaware) doesn't seem all that "girly" but I don't really think that quantum is just for guys either.
I asked Barnacle Boy and Crash for their opinion. The Boy: "Anyone who discusses electromagnetic radiation on a car trip with her sons in not a girly-girl." [Note, we did have two such conversations last week!] Crash: "No way."
I may now have a more intimate and personal grasp of identity politics. Who do you think I am?
I have been accused of being a "Boy Mom" by my neighbor who has only daughters. I have one girl and two boys, and I do find it easier to move in the world of light sabres and Shark Week than I do in the world of Barbies and hair straighteners.
ReplyDeleteI think you're smarter than "girly" or "sporty" (as the two ends, I suppose, of the feminine universe). I hope your acquaintance is too, and merely had a momentary lapse of articulation. Happens to me more often than I care to remember, especially with people I don't know very well.
ReplyDeleteDoes she possibly equate "creative" with "girly"? Poor thing may just be a little befuddled in what she meant and what came out her mouth...sometimes people get nervous when they are trying to be friendly and insert their foot into their mouth REALLLLy far...(yes, I know from first-hand experience.)
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