The "isms" start young

So, when you have a kid you find out that it's actually 1955, and that girls wear nothing but pink, and boys can wear anything but pink and often wear blue, and that deviation from the norm is unusual and frowned upon. I find it somewhat hilarious and maddening that people often mistake Hazel for a boy simply because she is not wearing pink. So it's not only that girls wear pink; it's that they can ONLY wear pink. All other colors indicate the default gender, that of male.

All of this is rather obvious, of course. What is less obvious (until you start to look for it) is how incredibly pervasive sexist and racist many products for children are, from dolls to books to toys. What struck me this week was our alphabet book. Here are some stats. Of all the humans appearing in the book, the breakdown is thus:

white boy babies/kids: 8
white girl babies/kids: 17
white babies of indeterminate gender: 2 (though 1 of those is dressed in "girl" colors)
black boy babies/kids: 1
black girl babies/kids: 1
Asian boy babies/kids: 0
Asian girl babies/kids: 2
Hispanic boy babies/kids: 1
Hispanic girl babies/kids: 0
Adults: 3 white men

Of these, the black girl is yelling, and the black boy is undressing. The white men are "dad", "officer", and "vet". The Hispanic boy is wearing a uniform. The girls are often in pink. One is a nurse.

When there's a picture of a body part (elbow, hands, feet, etc) it's always white.

The messaging is powerful, and starts from day one. The default is white. The default for girls is feminine. Asians and African Americans exist, but they're rare. And of course it struck me particularly that the two black kids are a) getting undressed, and b) yelling; they are not reading, singing, playing an instrument, showing a knee or toe or hair. The Officer and the Vet are men, but the nurse is a little blond girl. Nursing is a feminized (and therefore infantilized) profession, after all.

And then there's the sheer lack of creativity: for P, the choices are pumpkin, poncho, purple flower, puppet, pink shoes, pretty in pink (a girl in pink clothes), and peach. Really, two "pink"s? What about pot, or pincer, or palace, or pond, or pillow, or pine tree? (etc, etc)

Having had a child, the urgent need for Affirmative Action, which I always supported, has become even more clear to me. People think that it's wrong to establish "artificial" quotas, and feel that this country should be a meritocracy, and if it is all will turn out as it should. That's like assuming that capitalism will work perfectly if we just let the markets take care of everything. It's just not that simple. The fact is that our default messaging is NOT NATURAL, and we have to fight it in order to create a better and healthier balance and representation. Insisting on representation of all races is not artificial: disappearing people of color from our kids' books is. And taking care about the way in which we portray people is critically important, too. Perhaps the authors just didn't notice that the two black kids they picked were fullfilling the stereotypes that many white people have of African Americans. If they didn't notice, however, they should have, and we should start demanding such care.

There is an incredible power in seeing yourself (or not) in what you read and see in the media. If, from the beginning, you do not appear to exist in what you read, you have been prepped for either self- or other-hatred from the very beginning, and it will be the extraordinary person who can clearly see this throughout the intense, often foggy, and challenging years of youth and adolescence. Having role models matters, even if just on a subconscious level. And those role models need to be positive not just for oneself but for others, too.

We human beings extrapolate from single examples to make assumptions about groups. This is especially true for an individual who is a member of a group that's "other" or "minority". A guy can do something, make a mistake, and it is not assumed by society at large that his example stands for all men. A woman or girl or person of color, however, is always representing the group of which they are a part. If a girl makes a mistake in math class, many of her class members will think, "Oh, girls aren't good at math". A black kid gets into a fight, and the kids around will think, "Oh, black kids are aggressive/trouble/mean". For a girl who wants to play football or a boy who wants to sew, there is often no pathway, and if there is it's hard and full of judgements internal and external. These thoughts crop up so easily because the structure into which they fall is pre-seeded from the beginning, and instead of observing reality and assessing it with a clear mind, people wind up receiving what they perceive to be examples which prove the rule they had already internalized.

Little boy babies get called "ladies' man". Little girl babies get called princess. Some adopters don't want to adopt boys, particularly black boys, because they'll be "trouble". Parents worry that if they let their boy dress in pink he'll be gay, or "worse". They worry that a girl baby who's got (good and necessary) chubby cheeks and legs will be fat, and so they ration her food, putting her at risk for failure to thrive. These isms hurt us all. In order to change them, we have to look at and for them, and deliberately replace the 1950's content we're feeding our children with content that's consciously free of racism, sexism, homophobia, and trans-gender prejudice. It's not going to come naturally (ie, easily). Like everything else worthwhile, it'll take work. But the rewards can be huge. Peace, joy, and understanding, anyone?

So, I think I'm going to create my own alphabet book for Hazel. Leave your suggestions for what to put in it in the comments.