part two: the G word

Or, "In Which Heidi Rants Aimlessly about Embracing the Real Feminine."

Gender, girls, girliness. Pink shit, prissy princesses, Disney hyperfeminization, Barbie & Bratz, dolls & dresses, Gardisil & sex education. I've been swirling my thoughts about gender around in my brain for a couple of days in preperation for Blog for Gender Liberation Day.

I'm coming up with more questions than answers. My initial thought was about the paradox in my own beliefs... Wicca is so gendered, all about Mr. High Priest does this, Mz. High Priestess does that, perfect balance, blah blah blah. I reject and buy into it all at once. The dual nature of the universe is so evident. Gender is everywhere in nature. The thing is, it can be so obviously oppressive. There's an overlapping that traditional thought leaves little room to explore. Things transition, they sway, they defy categorization sometimes. A little expansion in our approach to gender would be such a positive thing.

Then I daydreamed about my superfical femininity in the shower. I am very girly compared to some. I adore long skirts, cute hair, getting flowers, and I am a silly, flirty personality most of the time. I revel in my body hair, though, and I only wear make-up twice or three times a year. I have series of artwork about how awesome my period and the moon are. I think of myself as celebrating a human/mammal femaleness. Soft round bloody milky hairy womanness. When I write that I'm so aware some people will be put off. Why?

The bulk of my musings are about being a woman, raising a daughter, in this time and place. Murky waters there, let me tell you. I want so much to allow her to find her own expression of girl-ness. At the same time, I find it exhausting to think about policing her environment. I have stacks of princess movies, that I loved as a kid, and of course I want to share them with her. I think dolls are mostly OK, but scantlity clad sexed up things will be banished.

The doll thing... I think dolls are wonderful. I can't think of anything more positive than nurturing to teach any child. I used to think I'd shy away from letting my daughter have dolls. I didn't want her to learn that her only worth as a woman is her potential to be a mother. Now that I am a mom in practice and not theory, I can't think of a more important set of skills to have. Learning to nurture and empathize and comfort are so important. It's not that girls need to be exposed to this less, it's that boys need it more.

I feel like I've written poorly organized essays instead of blogposts all day. Indulgent and weird? Back to the usual mommy blog tomorrow. Er.