My 9 year-old daughter had a friend over the other day and they were playing in her bedroom with the door open. They had put on dress up clothes (one in a Can-Can dress and the other in a dress like Quasimodo’s Esmeralda, which kind of freaked me out since they were costumes from the same period and region, coincidentally). They applied play make-up in the way that little girls do (meaning they looked exactly like a Can-Can dancer and Esmeralda). Then they pulled out dolls and started to play.

Listening from the other room, while folding laundry, I got the gist of their play. They were both mommies and had quadruplets (obviously conceived via IVF since there was never any mention of a father), and they were both career women. One worked from home and one worked out of the home. That they decided right away, and then matched careers to both positions. After they had that settled, they superficially bickered a little over the pros and cons of each:

“You don’t have to get up early and leave the house if you work at home.”

“But, I do have to get up and get work done before the babies wake up.”

“You get to eat lunch out if you go to work in an office, and when you come home, your work is all done for the day.”

“But, I have to hurry to get all my work done at work before I leave, and then I have to drive all the way home in rush hour traffic. And you get to be with the babies all day.”

And so on. In the end, they were both satisfied that neither had a better job or working condition. For third graders, I was pretty impressed at the way they already viewed the world, as something malleable and negotiable. They knew there were options open to them, in marriage, family and career. And, they dressed however the hell they wanted.

When I was a little girl and played house, it was always so rigid and formulaic. One was the mom and one was the dad. Mom stayed home with the one (or two) babies, and dad went to work. Mom did laundry, cooked meals and played with the babies. Dad went around the corner and stood there until the little girl pretending to be him figured enough time had passed and she could go back to the “house” and announce she was home and have dinner served on play dishes. The kid who played dad certainly never identified a career choice or discussed options with the mom, nor did the kid pretend to do any sort of job after kissing the mom goodbye and clomping off to work. Dads were obviously very mysterious to us, and Moms were just housewives. Funny thing was, in my circle, none of our actual mothers were actual housewives. My dad was a CPA though, which was and still is pretty mysterious to me.

Listening to the little girls play in the next room, I realized that their liberation will benefit the boys, too. These little girls expect domestic partnership, friendship and balance when they grow up and have their own families. The needs of both spouses will be addressed, heard and nurtured. The children involved will be valued and cared for. I was rather proud to witness this snippet of casual (and certainly unbeknownst to them) feminism occurring in a random suburban Midwestern house on a random weekend.

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While surfing on the internet the other day, I came across this and this. They’re shirts for little girls which proudly state: “President, Not Princess” and “Doctor, Not Diva.”

Let me start off by saying a loud, resounding, “YES!”

What a brilliant shirt. What a brilliant message.

I may have a son, but I have what feels like 6,789 nieces. Finding gifts for them for Christmas, birthdays or whatever presents somewhat of a challenge since I refuse to purchase anything with the words “Diva,” “Princess,” “Lil’ Darling,” or “Drama Queen.” Yesterday I saw a pair of sweatpants which said “Bootylicious” across the butt. They were size 18 months. I also refuse to buy anything even remotely related to those Bratz dolls which resemble child prositutes.

Now, I’m not someone who generally reads too much into things. I’m pretty selective about the battles I choose and arguing with people about the fashion choices for gradeschoolers isn’t something I generally engage. I mean, I could go on and on about how difficult it is to find a basic pair of jeans for a little girl that don’t have beads, sequins or ribbons attached to them. Or, I could ramble on about the messages of Disney movies (i.e. Sleeping Beauty snoozing away until the perfect man rescues her and the Little Mermaid giving up her voice to have a chance to meet some good-looking dude) and I could prognosticate about the horrors of Barbies, but truth be told, I wouldn’t forbid my daughter to play with or watch any of those things. I think, tempered with the wisdom of an informed parent, Cinderella and her posse and even evil Barbie, are probably OK.

The hardest issue for me to swallow is the almost complete lack of an opposing viewpoint. Where are the cartoons where the princess rebuffs the handsome prince and opens her own 401K and starts a small business? Or, the Barney songs about, “First you get a college degree/Then you work for awhile/Only then, my friend, can you even think about getting married/”

Someday, if I have a daughter, you can bet your ass I’ll be dressing her in those shirts. If I don’t have one, I’ll at least be drilling into my son’s head that he should want to end up with a “Doctor” rather than a “Diva.”

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The new film Knocked Up, written and directed by Judd Apatow (Freaks and Geeks, The 40-Year-Old Virgin), is getting rave reviews from movie critics but an apparent thumbs down from some in another group — feminists. Why? Because of the basic premise — a successful woman (Katherine Heigl) gets “knocked up” by a lumpy loser (Seth Rogen) during a one-night stand, and instead of rushing down to Planned Parenthood, she decides to keep the baby. That’s it, that’s the big beef, that there apparently wasn’t any lengthy discussion of abortion. Linda Z, with WBAI Radio in New York, calls Knocked Up “right wing misogyny” (wait, I thought the liberals ran Hollywood — I’m so confused!) and says it drips with “not so hidden reactionary religious tones”.

There’s a more reasoned and less emotional discourse going on by Ann at Feministing about the film, saying that leaving out the abortion option is a “glaring omission”. Why? I’m staunchly pro-choice, but I don’t see why there should be some sort of obligation. While it’s maybe a valid point to make that Rogen and Heigl are acting a bit unrealistically, is that something to get worked up about? Doesn’t almost every romantic comedy made in the last 30 years have some ridiculous plot at its core? It’s not realistic that Julia Roberts would walk into a book store and fall in love with the guy behind the counter. It’s not realistic that Meg Ryan would dump her fiancé for some dope in Seattle that she heard on the radio. Can’t a movie just be fun and not tied to political correctness?

So why did the director choose to not address abortion? My first thought was that Apatow didn’t want to bring his light-hearted movie to a screeching halt (see also, Fast Times at Ridgemont High), or worse yet, feel the need to play up an abortion plot line for yuks. But the answer turns out to be even simpler — he just didn’t want to:

“[Keeping the baby] was the story I wanted to tell,” said Apatow. “I’m sure there are fascinating stories about people having abortions — ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High,’ one of my favorites, is about a girl having sex in high school and then having an abortion. I think both points of view [approaches to an unplanned pregnancy] are valid. But I wanted to make a movie about two people trying really hard to do the right thing.”

OK, so obviously Apatow disagrees with me on Fast Times, but the bottom line is I don’t care what awful social message the film supposedly has, it’s entertainment and escapism, not government propaganda — and if the rest of it is as funny as this R-rated international trailer, it’s sure to end up on my list of favorite films.

[youtube]-F6YTdGWxLY[/youtube]

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Researchers at the University of British Columbia have reported on an experiment that demonstrates that when girls are told they are naturally worse at math, they perform worse on tests.

As one researcher said:

“We told one group of women a made-up story about scientists discovering a math gene on the Y (male) chromosome, and those women got only half as many answers correct as the others ???��??? possibly because they choked under the pressure,” said UBC psychology professor Steven Heine, whose study with PhD student Ilan Dar-Nimrod was published yesterday in Science magazine.

“But the women who were told there is no genetic difference in math ability between men and women did better, possibly because it’s liberating to learn you don’t have a genetic disadvantage.”

CNN also reported on the story (see? I do read news sites besides the TO Star!) and had more details on how the study was administered:

Heine and doctoral student Ilan Dar-Nimrod wanted to see how people are affected by stereotypes about themselves. They divided more than 220 women into four groups and administered math and reading comprehension tests between 2003 and 2006. Their results are reported in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

The women were given a math test, then asked to read an essay, and then given a second math exam.

In two groups the women averaged between five and 10 correct answers out of 25 math questions. In the other two they averaged between 15 and 20 correct.

The women in the lower-scoring groups read essays that either contended that there is a genetic difference between men and women in math ability, or discussed the images of women in art — a reading which did not discuss math but was designed to remind them of being female.

Those two groups not only fell short of the other women, but their performance declined between the two math tests, meaning they scored lower after reading the essays than before.

It’s a process psychologists call a stereotype threat, Heine explained. “If a member of a group for which there is a negative stereotype is in a position to test the stereotype, they are likely to choke under the pressure.”

What does this mean for parents? In yet another case of Experts Telling Us What We Already Knew, don’t tell your children that they can’t do such-and-such because of their sex. Or their height, or their eye colour, or their skin colour, or whatever. Being reminded of a stereotype that claims one is innately incapable of performing a particular task tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. And if your kids are exposed to these stereotypes from other sources (TV, books, magazines, schools, friends), work with them to understand that the stereotype isn’t true, and even if it was, it wouldn’t necessarily apply to them.

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Can I admit to you that I am terrified of raising a daughter?

When a man breaks into a Denver classroom, chases out the boys, binds and sexually assaults the girls before shooting them–when another man breaks into an Amish one-room schoolhouse (apparently because it would be easy) and forces the boys out to bind and slaughter girls–then I think of Casey’s post at Expectant Waiting:

If my daughters are lucky, they’ll grow up with a vague awareness of the hate that surrounds them.

If they’re unlucky, a man will bust in on their classroom, rape them, and execute them.

And just in case I think I’m safe here, with those killings so far away, I will read about two boys in my own town who pinned a twelve-year-old girl to the ground and set her on fire with lighter fluid–as a lark.

I want to keep Frances safe; I also want her to be a full and self-confident person who will fearlessly find and demand her own place in the world. I can’t do both. It makes me crazy.

Finding an acceptable level of risk is, for me, the hardest part of this motherhood thing so far. According to some, no level of risk is ok: I’ve seen newspaper articles instructing parents not to use mechanized baby swings (they can trigger frenzied rages in dogs and cats, apparently), to bolt televisions to the stands, and to stay within arm’s reach of your children in a swimming pool or lake at all times. This seems extreme, but certainly by not doing these things I am accepting a slightly increased risk of harm.

This is hard enough–when I feel like I can assess the information and the probabilities and make a reasonable and informed choice–but hate? How do I control for hate? How do I assess the chances and outcomes of hate? I can’t. I can’t, and short of locking her in the basement (which would surely be more harmful to her than almost anything the world could do) there’s nothing I can do. Somehow, someday soon, I’ll have to open the front door and let her walk through it on her own, to find friends and make choices and work and build a life and possibly confront hate and be gunned down by a madman with a grudge against girls. Or lit on fire by her friends. I don’t want her to fear the world, so I will hold the door open for her with a smile.

And work, work, work my whole life against the hate that makes the world dangerous for her.

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At least once every two weeks, I revisit the family budget and try to figure out a way to scale my hours back to part time. I’ve done this since returning to work after maternity leave twenty months ago. That makes forty budget sessions, minimum, and every one is the same: if I reduce my hours, we go in the red. The difference in cost between part-time and full-time child care is so slight that a reduction in hourly earnings would not be met with a reduction in costs, and the result would be a monthly budget deficit that could only be eliminated if we cancelled the cable, the phone, the cell phones, the internet, all disposable income and reduced our monthly grocery bill by about $100. And that would be, mind you, with me working part-time. If I were to stay home, we would have to sell the house and rent an apartment instead.

So I’ll admit to feeling a tad fed up with the constant media flood of stories about women who actually have the choice of whether or not to work. The women I know who work, work because they have to–they are the sole or main breadwinner in their families, or without their income their families wouldn’t eat. Most of the women I know who don’t work for pay, don’t because the money they could earn wouldn’t cover the cost of childcare. Yet newspapers and magazines seem entirely preoccupied with stories about the five percent of women whose husbands earn enough money that they can realistically decide for themselves whether or not they want to work.

Or, as this wonderful article from today’s Toronto Star put it, “The average woman gets up and goes to work. She doesn’t have time to wring her hands about it.”

The result? Policy proposals that come out of these discussions tend to be in the interests of those who can afford to trade less income for more family time.

While flex-time, shorter work weeks and more part-time options are often cited as family-friendly solutions for working parents, the just-released 2006 Ask A Working Woman Survey by the giant U.S. labour federation, AFL-CIO, shows different priorities. Top concerns among the 25,000 respondents included inadequate pay rates that don’t keep up with cost of living, lack of retirement security and inadequate benefits.

The biannual survey has consistently shown women would rather have the opportunity to work overtime than reduce work hours. In 2006, 38 per cent said their earnings comprise all or almost all their family income; 75 per cent said their earnings comprise half or more than half.

You might think that after thirty years of the same criticisms–that the problems of upper-middle class women are not actually representative of the problems of women as a whole, and that real feminism explores solutions that work for women who are among the working poor or just-plain-poor and not only the rich–that we might see some change. Instead, the media remains consistently fixated on the so-called “plight” of women with options and ignores the struggles of women without. Or, as Sandra Tsing Loh put it, afflufemza: “wherein the problems of affluence are recast as the struggles of feminism.”

And you know that if this is true for me–a university-educated woman with a comfortable middle-class income and an employer who technically offers options such as part-time work and flex-time, but who can’t afford to use them not because my income pays for fancy vacations or nice cars but because it pays for the groceries–then how true must this be for the majority of women, who are not university-educated and who don’t have comfortable middle-class incomes?

Today, the wealthiest 20% of North Americans own approximately 80% of the resources. They also seem to get about 80% of the air-time. It’s a crying shame.

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Sweetney feels for the little people in her role as a white, educated, stay-at-home mom:

But all of this “progress” for women has had little impact on the vast majority of poor women and women of color. If anything, class lines have become more rigid and harder to cross, race relations are reaching new lows, and — as the New York Times constantly informs us — the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. The uplift of white middle-class working ladies may be notable, but somehow I can’t completely take achieving Assistant Slavemaster status as a real, unqualified win for our team.

And of course I say all of this as an educated, white middle-class woman. As such, the benefits I’ve derived from Feminism are legion. But increasingly I feel more than a little queasy about those privileges, seeing that they don’t extend much beyond other women exactly like me. And, well, that sucks. And its wrong. And I don’t want to be a part of a movement that supports and reinforces these hierarchies and divisions.

I want something better.

Here’s a newsflash! Perhaps some of the women living in poverty or who are “of color” don’t give a rat’s ass about your ideology. Perhaps they don’t want your white brand of feminism. Perhaps they are more worried about putting food on the table and discouraging their children from joining gangs or being caught in violent cross-fire or drugs than they are about having same sex bathrooms and having the same job as the average, upper-class, volvo driving, WSJ reading, green lawn obsessing dad.

I think before we put these tell these women what they want/need and inevitably set them up for your brand of equality which just might land them on the front lines, we should ask them if that is really what they want or if it is simply the desire of some middle class white women who think they know what’s best for “women of color”? How about we address the real problems of poverty and minorities instead of imposing whiny, self-absorbed, boo-hooing that can only result in tears in your Zinfandel over an imaginary injustice of being passed over as the new CEO of Microsoft. No fair! I’ve been changing diapers and allowing my children to explore their environment naturally while respecting their identity and gently guiding them to make their own decisions, how on earth can I be passed up!?!

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