Forgive the lazy post, but it was the first week of classes, I am in the middle of reviewing the page proof for Sex and Unisex, and I am being dogged by three other projects all with deadlines on or around September 15. In the meantime, the news items about dress and gender just won't take a break! Here are a few that distracted me long enough to read, even though there was not time to add commentary.
Rastafarian High School Student Sent Home From School For Ten Days For Having Dreadlocks (ThinkProgress, 9/4/2014)
School Dress Codes: The Funny-Not-Funny Video You Have to See (Soraya Chemaly for the Huffington Post, 9/5/2014)
Hear Us Roar: Finding Feminism in Fashion (Maya Singer for Style.com, 9/5/2014)
Tell Me About It: Boy who likes ‘girl’ things needs guidance, not shame (Carolyn Hax, syndicated, 9/5/2014)
Rastafarian High School Student Sent Home From School For Ten Days For Having Dreadlocks (ThinkProgress, 9/4/2014)
School Dress Codes: The Funny-Not-Funny Video You Have to See (Soraya Chemaly for the Huffington Post, 9/5/2014)
Hear Us Roar: Finding Feminism in Fashion (Maya Singer for Style.com, 9/5/2014)
Tell Me About It: Boy who likes ‘girl’ things needs guidance, not shame (Carolyn Hax, syndicated, 9/5/2014)
OK, a little bit of commentary. Carolyn Hax's response to the concerned auntie contained brightened my dreary, ink-spattered life.
Unless someone over their shoulders is shaming them back to their side of the gender line (sadly, not a hypothetical one), children will like what they like, and that means that superheroes, bright pink and dinosaurs often live together in harmony in a child’s imagination.
That some adults, and apparently 99.5 percent of toy marketers, want to “fix” this by shaming kids into conformity is, to my mind, an obscenity long overdue for hard societal push-back.
Indeed!
