Posts Tagged ‘play’

Childhood is a time of discovery, exploration, snuggling, storybooks, and play. It is a beautiful, beautiful time of life. Let’s not limit it.

Pigtail Pals is not anti-princess. We’re not anti-pink. We’re anti-limitation. We want our children to have all the room in the world to be who they love to be, and the room to define what that is. We need to agree to give them that space.

Playing princesses is fine. But it’s just one slice of the pie. Let’s teach our children that life is a marvelous feast. Let’s give them idea after idea to devour. Imagination is a hungry beast. 

Let’s allow them to be a princess one day, a pirate or explorer the next….whether they are a boy or a girl.

Let’s get out of their way, and allow them to be children.

Lego wordle from Lego Friends tv commercial. Any of that say STEM to you?

I know we’ve been talking about Lego quite a bit.

What I find so fascinating about this story is how it is the perfect microcosm of all things girlhood these days. Corporate pink-washing, relegating girls to all things pretty and sweet, beauty over brains, using sexism to defend sexism, make-up on 8 year olds in a Lego tv commercial, and the list goes on.

So while this is about Lego, this is about so much more. Lego is just a symptom of ginormous problems staring down our girls. I just hope we are raising them to be tough enough to take it on and squash it.

Lowest Common Denominator

To be fair, the new Lego Friends isn’t all bad. It is just that it isn’t all that good, from a brand parents go to as an amazing brain-boosting toy. This new line leaves many parents wondering how Lego sees their girls’ brains, as the girl’s line is heavy on the cute, light on construction (I don’t count putting flower petals on stems or bows on dogs as building). I do like the science lab and tree house, and even the cafe (a little bit) and vet clinic. Olivia’s big house looks like it would be fun to build. Amelia, my almost-6-year-old would like them, but we would both be left wishing the majority of the sets required more actual construction. And challenging construction at that. There are so few building pieces, it would be hard to take them apart and build your own creation. That is the kind of stuff that breaks my Lego-loving heart.

The other part that breaks my heart is how segregated by gender Lego has become. Amelia received and loved the Lego City Marina for Christmas. For her birthday next week, my mom and dad got her another section of Lego City. I bought her a tub of primary colored bricks and a green and blue building board. But I wonder in a couple of years how my kids will view Lego, with the boy-dominated licensed sets and the all-girl Heartlake City. Lego has drawn a rather thick pink and blue line in the sand. Try as I might, I don’t know how much longer I will be able to keep Lego gender-equal in my home. As it stands, Lego seems to have some pretty sexist messages jumping off their boxes at kids, and I’m not a huge fan of teaching my kids sexist messages. Lyn Mikel Brown says,“The human brain is “fantastically plastic” and the best thing we can do for our children is to give them a full range of opportunities and experiences, especially in the early years. We don’t know at five how little Tierra’s or Tommy’s passions and talents will surface, so why pay good money to limit their options to the pink and blue aisles of toy stores?”

Lego is in the spot they are in not because girls changed, but because Lego changed on girls. To boost sales in the early 2000′s they focused on licensing deals with boys square in their sights. Girls stopped playing with Lego because Leg0 stopped including them. You’ve all seen the 1981 “What it is, is beautiful” ad circulating….1981 was 31 years ago. 31 years is a long time, Lego. Lego’s own marketing told girls that Lego wasn’t for girls. You can kinda see how girls went they way they did on this one.

Lego used the lowest common denominator  in girlhood to design their line. Lego says the end result is after four years of $4 million in global research and this is what girls and moms want. For reals, Lego? I guess they didn’t interview the several thousands of moms (and dads and aunts and uncles and grandmas and caring adults) who voiced their opinion on the Lego Facebook page, several thousand more from the Pigtail Pals Facebook page (and other rad groups like Powered By Girl, SPARK, New Moon Girls, Princess Free Zone, Reel Girl; and the formidable girl culture expert, one Peggy Orenstein). A change.org petition calling for Lego to try harder for our girls has a couple thousand signatures.  Lego says their research revealed girls play in the first person, are interested in beauty, and want to get to their role playing more quickly than boys. This fascinates me, as I have spent the past two weeks watching my female child play HOURS of Lego and not once tell herself to hurry it up so her Lego self can get her plastic hair done at the beauty salon.

Amy Jussel of Shaping Youth asks, “How (and why) are we missing profound opportunities to leverage neuroscience breakthroughs for positive change, wellness and play? How can we finally be tossing aside ‘hardwired corpus calossum theories’ on differences in boys/girls, acknowledging brain plasticity and realizing this play pattern/edu deficit stuff is NOT ‘set in stone’ and yet simultaneously standby to see Lego spend $40 million in mega-marketing bucks to proceed to SET it in stone.” Read the entire amazing post HERE.

You know how I always say, “I’m not anti-pink. I’m not anti-princess. I am anti-limitation. When we limit our children, we limit our children.”? Well, that pithy Amy Jussel says it this way and I like it:

I AM against stacking the deck of ‘learned behavior’ with pervasively marketed signals of stereotyped imagery embedding into the brain with stiflingly narrowcast assembly-line rote mimickry. I far prefer pure, imaginative, problem-solving free form fun.

I encourage you to watch the Lego Friends tv commercials, with the make-up clad third graders in the opener making a heart with their hands (awww, somewhere Taylor Swift just did one back) and the music sparkles and we are introduced to Heartlake City, the pinky-purple enclave where the Lego Friends live. With hearts on sky scrapers not a male in sight. Weird.

Watch as the saccharine-sweet narrator talks about the Friends partying at the cafe with the girls (only after they’ve been styled at the salon) because they need to chill after decorating their houses. It is important to note the commercial doesn’t show the girls finishing up a surgery at the clinic and then heading over to the science lab to help Lego Friend Olivia with her latest experiment. Lego shows the girls get coiffed at the salon and then go party.  I think Lego needs to Redefine Girly just a tish.

I think the commercial speaks loudly as to how Lego sees girls, what Lego thinks girls are interested in, and how highly Lego holds girls’ capacity for spacial reasoning and construction play. Will this attract our girly-girls out there who think Lego is only for boys, or will only play with pink and pretty things? Maybe. I am yet unconvinced the ends justify the means. Being a girly-girl doesn’t make one incapable of building and planning and designing and reasoning, but Lego doesn’t seem to see it that way. Lego has a very clear idea of what “girly” means to them.

I am left wondering, in the age of childhood obesity, why Lego could not have created a juice bar/farmer’s stand with fresh produce and flowers? The all-female residents of Heartlake City are shown in the commercials rolling down to the cafe for burgers, shakes, and cupcakes. Instead of a cupcake baker, couldn’t Lego Friend Andrea be an organic farmer and we could build her a barn and big Chevy farm truck? And she could have a little laptop where she tracks weather systems and soil conditions and Skypes with other organic farmers around the world? No? Too much?   

I also wonder, why can’t a single one of the girls work in downtown Heartlake in one of those skyscrapers? Maybe as, oh I don’t know…an engineer or architect? Is that just crazy talk? Why are they in the burbs decorating houses and cupcakes? Did I miss the Lego Friends Time Machine that zapped us back to 1952? Were you to lay a track of the Lego Friends commercial over one for Barbie Charm School or Lelli Kelly sparkle toe shoes or anything Disney Princess, they all sound exactly the same. Somehow Lego and other marketers decided the way to attract XX-chromosome customers you need a syrupy-sweet female voice with blue birds singing in the background to sell girls on the notion their role in this world is to be pretty and sweet. Way to STEM it up, Lego.

As Daniel Sinker says in his post, “Legos are still held up as a gateway to engineering and science, and despite my misgivings about the current state of their kits, I still believe they are. But if they’ve become toys marketed to a single gender, then we’re just reproducing the already awful gender imbalance in STEM education and employment.”

If girls are playing in the first person, as Lego says their research found, why is Lego not making people that are amazing role models for girls? Why is Lego not taking this opportunity to promote STEM to girls? In addition to a cafe owner, where is the calculus teacher or surgeon or CEO or scientific explorer or rescue worker or geologist or…..anything but what they gave us that sells girls short. Mireya Mayor is a famous National Geographic wildlife explorer, author, and a total girly-girl, even when treking across the world discovering new animal species. Lego, the king of licensing, couldn’t send her an email? I’d buy Mireya Mayor or Bindi Irwin Lego by the bucket. I like the vet (short skirt-wearing vet, this was questioned by a vet on our Facebook page) and the invention lab, but instead Lego morphed Polly Pockets and Barbie into brick form. Lego had such an amazing opportunity here to break away from the pack at the quarter pole and be a champion for girls. They didn’t take it. It is still out there, Mega Bloks, in case your listening.

Somebody please have the guts to show our girls how strong and smart and incredible and powerful they can be. I do it with my shirts and I sell them by the thousands. Let’s put that into a little plastic toy form. I’ve got ideas, who wants to listen? Mattel, wanna talk? Manhattan Toy Company? Is there ANYONE out there who has not drank the pink Kool-Aid?? I think I’m going to make myself cry.

Let’s move on…..

NBC’s TODAY Show Uses Sexism and Stereotypes to Promote Sexism and Stereotypes

On Tuesday morning many of us watched incredulously (jump to 5:01 in the video) as Matt Lauer interviewed Star Jones, Donny Deutsch, and Dr. Nancy Snyderman. One of the topics discussed was Lego Friends, and the two minute discussion was a master’s class in using ingrained cultural sexism to defend sexism. The interview left many of us furious and offended. As was brilliantly said on the Pigtail Facebook page: “Having people with such a reach not GET IT is overwhelming.”

Margot Magowan of Reel Girl transcribed the segment:

Matt Lauer:

Star Jones: And they give you little electric mixers and brushes and combs and purses.

Donnie Deutsch: Perfect, perfect.

Matt Lauer: You’re sounding down on this.

Jones: When you’re a little girl, you want to build bridges also. You want to put them on top of each other. You don’t want–

Lauer: So go out and buy the architectural Lego.

(Nancy Snyderman laughs.)

Jones: Which is exactly the way my three year old goddaughter does. She has the architectural one. The big yellow ones.

Nancy Snyderman: These are perfectly okay. The reality is there is a gender difference. Girls like playing with girl’s things, and you’re still constructing things. If the cupcake girl can still do calculus, I have no issue.

Then there’s this part, Italics mine because there was so much interupting at this point it is hard to follow:

Deutsch: You’re teaching them to build! (Not really, the sets require precious little challenging building.)

Snyderman: It gets girls into architecture and math and design, I’m all for it!

Jones: Give them some alternatives for goodness sake. (Visibly frustrated.)

Lauer: There’s no law that says they can’t go to the store and buy the Frank Lloyd Wright line. (No law, but a hell of a lot of marketing.)

Jones: They (don’t) put the Legos in the girls sections. (Star was interupted here and not able to finish her sentence.)

Deutsch: Little Girls do like princesses and things like that. I like princesses. (Categorical stereotype presented as fact. My little girl does not like princess. I know many others like her.)

Snyderman: And will parents buy this for boys? (Laughs loudly)

Deutsch: No they won’t. (Laughs loudly, with an “Oh my God, that’d be so gay” look on his face.)

Lauer: That’s probably not going to happen. (Gives Nancy a “Are you crazy” side glance because everyone knows boys don’t touch girls’ things.)

(Matt, Donny, and Nancy all laugh loudly as Star sits slumped and defeated in her chair.)

Well then. If that isn’t offensive, I don’t know what is. First, for a segment on marketing, no one but Star Jones seemed to understand marketing. How a product is packaged, and who is shown playing with it, matters. Where the product is placed in the store, specifically the pink and blue toy aisles, matters. The images and messages and color coding our kids see over and over and over again, matters. This is called marketing, and marketers know all of this matters. That is why they spend so much money doing it. Keep in mind, Donny Deutsch is an ad guy. A famous one. And he uses a cupcake and princess analogy presented as fact, when what he is doing is missing the point that girls are programmed and conditioned to like those things because so often, they have no other choices. They like what they have to choose from. It is like Henry Ford saying, “You can have any color you want so long as it is black.” Girls who are given a wider range to choose from demonstrate a variety of interests. If from that wide range they choose cupcakes and tutus, bless their little hearts. But sweet baby jeebus give them choices. Choices! 2012 could be the year of choices!!

Second, the bigger issue is the laughter over the idea of boys playing with this Lego Friends line. And not just a chuckle. Three of the four “professional” panelists had cracked themselves up over the idea of a boy playing with a toy so feminine. Clearly the panelists feel there is a definite distinction over what girls and boys should be playing with, and the idea of a boy being interested in Heartlake City is hilarious.

The Sanford Harmony Program  said it best on the Pigtail Facebook page: “This was a tremendous missed opportunity for bringing boys and girls TOGETHER. If children are given more chances to establish some common ground, and work and play with one another, they will be more inclined to engage more often – learning from and about each other along the way. The messages and images polarizing our girls and boys contribute tremendously to the notion that boys and girls grow-up in “separate worlds.” In these single-gender peer groups, kids are honing their communication and problem solving skills in isolation of one another and socializing each other in different ways. The world is co-ed – let’s do something to help bring our kids together.” 

Vintage Lego ad, when Lego knew who they were and what they meant to kids.

 Side by Side Gender Apartheid: A Visual Reference

I headed to YouTube to catch some Lego tv commercials, and see if maybe this all wasn’t just in my head. So I watched two Lego Friends commercials, and then created a wordle from the words in the used by the narrator in the commercial, and the colors most represented by the brick colors in the sets. I then did the same for a Lego Dino and Lego City commercial.

You be the judge.

Apartheid (n): From the Afrikaans word for “apartness”, a system of segregation.

Words captured from Lego commercials, Lego Friends on left, Lego Dino and Lego City on right. (blog.pigtailpals.com)

I grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, in a neighborhood filled with kids riding bikes and lemonade stands and tree forts. The kind of place where neighbors borrow cups of sugar from each other, and balloons decorate mailboxes on birthday party days. We later moved to a tiny town in Wisconsin, where the blue sky seemed to stretch forever. It was a good childhood.

And most of it was spent outdoors. My dad traveled for business during the week, leaving my mom to wrangle us kids…I being the eldest with two younger brothers. My mom was one of those “I have three kids under five” moms. Which is why we heard very frequently “Go OUTSIDE and play!”

I now holler the same thing at my kids. We have a large corner lot in the city, fenced in and surrounded by tall lilac bushes and maple trees. They have a swing set and a play house and riding toys and sidewalk chalk and a great menagerie of sports equipment. I send them outside with the dogs who watch over them and I let them fend for themselves. They fight and get hurt and get amazingly dirty….but they take care of themselves and each other. They also have the free space to examine bugs and try to catch butterflies (and robins) and they yell hi to our neighbors over the fence. Only once have they let themselves out of the yard to go stand at the bus stop.

I want them to have a happy and safe childhood, and I want most of it to be spent outside. Nature gives them the chance to problem solve, to think creatively, to constantly use their understanding of science to build on bigger concepts. I’ve been told more than once to go back inside, that I’m bothering them.

Here are some tips our family would like to share with you on how we enjoy nature. Make a point to get outside everyday!

3yo Benny helping plant seeds in the veggie garden.

5yo Amelia singing lullabies to a worm.

Kid-made fort in the yard. I was told to scram.

Mattel's "I Can Be...A Sea World Trainer" Barbie that my daughter will not be receiving on Christmas morning.

For a mother, that lure of giving that perfect gift to a delighted and giddy child on Christmas morning is pretty strong.   

My daughter is obsessed with ocean life. This began several months back, when a student teacher at her preschool brought in a giant floor puzzle with an image of the layers of the ocean on it. We’ve checked out every ocean book the library offers, two times over. We’ve watched “Free Willy 4″ more times than I can count. Imaginative play usually involves Amelia training her baby brother, whom she has turned into a dolphin or seal. Our bedtime stories involve belugas and narwhals and orcas and grey whales and various attacking sharks.  

She’s been coveting this Sea World Barbie. She squeals every time we see it in the store. She picks up the box and hugs it. I try to ask her questions like, “Do you think the doll is fun? Are you more excited for the dolphin and orca?” to try to get a picture of what she is really so wild about. She does not own any other Barbies, nor does most of her play seem like if she had a Barbie, it would fit in. I’ve had people tell me the very imaginative ways their girls play with Barbie. I’m sure they do. But my daughter has very imaginative play without the aid of a sexualized toy. Sexualization is sexualization, whether it has blue eye shadow or not. 

Several weeks back I was Christmas shopping and saw this Sea World Barbie for $10. That’s half the price of the dolphin trainer doll on the Sea World website, and the doll there seems to have the same body proportions as Barbie. I do not like Barbie, but I had never purchased one as a parent, so I thought maybe I should try it and see things from that side of the fence. I bought it. And I immediately regretted it.  

I rationalized that I would talk to my husband about it, and get his take. I could always return it, and Amelia would never know. I was certain she would love this on Christmas morning, but I had this pit in my stomach every time I thought about giving her the first Barbie. It goes against everything I believe in, and work for.  

Mattel, the company that makes Barbie, estimates that 90% of 3-10 year old girls own at least one Barbie, with the majority owning eight. We fall into that other 10%, because I read the research and studies and articles all day long. I teach other parents about media literacy and sexualization and the pinkification of girlhood. I know the science behind all of this, and base my business around it. 

Still, I cannot in good conscience give my daughter a toy that is sexualized. That promotes beauty and sexiness as a woman’s ultimates assets. That only has one body size. That has ridiculously sexed up outfits for careers that aren’t very imaginative. That has impossible body and physical portions that disrespect my daughter’s natural beauty and healthy body.  

I know there are tons of people who will say “Get over yourself, Lady”, “Barbie is no big deal”, and my fave “I played with Baribe and I turned out fine”. But research is telling us over and over and over again that early sexualization IS a big deal. A really really big deal. Sexualized childhood is something I do not accept for my children.  

I just can’t do it. I can’t be responsible for giving her those messages. She’ll get them from other sources as she gets older, and it will be my job then to help her question those messages and navigate around them to stay the course of high self-esteem and positive body image.  

I have a lot of parents ask me or email me and say, “How do I do this? How do I keep this stuff away from my daughter?”. Many times I have the answers. Other times I am just the mom of an almost five year old girl, and I can’t answer because I haven’t been there yet.  

I think a lot of good parenting comes down to common sense. And when my mama instincts, when my gut, tells me “Don’t do it”, I don’t do it. Sea World Barbie will be returned to the store.  

For the record, my husband said a firm no to Barbie. Although this Barbie is certainly relatively tame, most others are not. He did, however, spend all of last Friday night digging through boxes in our basement. Saturday morning he presented Amelia with a four inch Princess Leia toy from his childhood. That’s one princess I can live with.  

Sometimes being a good parent isn’t about what you do, it is about what you don’t do. I don’t give my children toys that make my heart hurt. And I think we’ll all have smiles on our faces come Christmas morning. 

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~ 

Yesterday our friend Dr. Robyn Silverman wrote this great post: “Happy Holidays! I Hate Everything On My Child’s Wish List” with a helpful list of consideration points should you find yourself in a dilema similar to mine.

Frida Kahlo as a young woman

Today is Frida Kahlo’s birthday. Born in 1907, Frida spent much of her life Redefining Girly. She survived polio. She attended classes to prepare for med school during a time when most women would not have attended college. She lived through a horrible bus accident that left her with life threatening injuries. It was during the healing process from these injuries that she became an artist. Much like her art, Frida lived a life that was intense, vivid, and brilliant.

My favorite quote of hers is: “I paint self portraits because I am the person I know best.”

I think there is power in that statement. How many of us, or our daugthers, really KNOW who we are? Do you know yourself better than you know your child, spouse, or best friends? I don’t mean who we wish we could be, or what we would rather be doing. Not our role in our family, our group of friends, or our class at school — Who we are as an individual in a world full of others trying to figure out the same thing. What do you stand for? What are you passionate about? What makes you see beauty? What makes your heart sing?

If these questions have you drawing a blank, I encourage you to find the nearest preschooler and spend the afternoon with them. Children around the ages of 3-5 years old are by nature, self-confident. You’ll often find they know quite a bit more than you do, will let you know that, and can be at times full of themselves. Their needs are met. Their job is to simply wake up, launch themselves from bed, and discover. They are allowed to be a shark at the breakfast table, and by mid-afternoon morph into a bear on a raft who lives in a cave in the Wiley Swamp. A vibrant imagination begets a vibrant life.

There is beauty in living a life that is vibrant. My preschool aged daughter reminded me of this one afternoon while she finger painted on our back porch. In bold and generous amounts of bright red, blue, yellow, and green paint she created a picture that was not only vivid in color, it’s composition had an impact on me.

“This is really colorful. What is it a picture of?” I asked her, focusing on the energy I could see transferred to the easel.

“It is me. I am beautiful. I am a brave knight” she replied. It was like a resume for a four year old.

I smiled and looked down at her, and then realized she had also painted her hands and forearms and feet and shins. You know, for the full body experience. People are more than who they are on paper.

What would YOUR self portrait look like? How well do you know yourself?

What does your self portrait look like?

Want to help your daughter create her own self portrait?

Ages 0-3: Butcher paper, finger paint, fat brushes (or toothbrushes), floorspace, and LOTS of clean up rags is all you need. Remember that finger paint can also go on piggies toes.

Ages 4-7: Have your girl lay down and trace an outline of your daughter with sidewalk chalk, then have her fill in the blank canvas as she tells you about how neat she is.

Ages 8-11: Set up an easel outside with paints or oil pastels, and leave a post it on a blank sheet of paper that says “Show me who you are”

Ages 12+: Sit side by side and look at family photos together, discussing the similar traits the women in your family share (both look and personalities). Create a self portrait with colored pencils, clay, a poem, or a list of words.

And by all means, color outside of the lines!

You know, when I was a kid, summer meant lemonade stands, trips to the library, afternoons at the swimming pool, bike riding everywhere, and overall free lancing until it was time to come home for a late dinner. Throw in some sailing and annual trips to visit the cousins in Toledo….It was grand. It was all very Norman Rockwell-ian and exactly as it should have been.

And there were the weeks I went to camp. Brownie Day Camp. Girl Scout Camp. YMCA Day Camp. Band Camp (shut up). Sailing Camp. Student Council Camp. Then there was the six years I was a camp counselor at the YMCA Day Camp I had grown up at. I spent so many summers having adventures and living outdoors and enjoying nature that I gave Laura Ingalls Wilder a run for her money.

I loved all of it – being outside, hiking through the woods, teaching sports to kids, dumb camp songs, river walks, arts & crafts, cooking on a campfire, swimming, boating, preparing skits for Parents Night, the sound of the cabin door creaking open, All-Camp Capture The Flag, throwing frogs at lifeguards, the epic 160 foot slip-n-slide we made with pool covers and dish soap….even the underwear on the flagpole.

You know, S-U-M-M-E-R  C-A-M-P. The kind with bugs.

A few weeks ago my mother sent me a letter in the mail. It has a yellow sticky note on it, which means she thinks it is something serious and the sticky note bears her warnings and forebodings. In college this would have been articles on STDs and binge drinking and the importance of antioxidants. But these days, in my matured adulthood, it means one thing and one thing only: Sexualization & Gender Stereotypes.

I read her note that says: “Pigtail Pals needs to become a corporate sponsor for this camp and redirect curriculum”. Huh, I thought. I actually used to run this community day camp the summer after I graduated from high school. What could have possibly become so awful about it?

Gender Stereotype Summer Camp!

Did you digest all of that? Let’s break this down:

Girls: For ages 4 and up, those girls whose dreams are wild and daring enough to be an “aspiring princess” get to go up to the school, sit in the gym, make capes and craft tiaras for themselves and their favorite doll, learn a princess dance, wear a princess dress, and attend a tea party and something of a debutante ball.

Boys: For ages 4 and up, Adventure Camp! They will explore Ravine Park, go fishing, sports day, Olympics day, they will venture away from the school gym and embark on safe adventures all around the village.

In fact, the boys will become such Masters of the Universe that they only meet at the school for the first day, after which their grandness takes them to locations and activities so exciting they cannot be named in the community newsletter.

Summer Camp for girls should look like this (images from Rachel Simmon’s Girl Leadership Institute, where even I want to be a camper!)

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO SUMMER CAMP??? WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO SUMMER CAMP!!!

Girls sitting in a gym doing arts & crafts on what is really a glorified play date with princess dresses and tea parties DOES NOT a summer camp experience make.

What it does make is Stepford Wives. What of the girls who are ages 4 and up and do not aspire to be princesses or learn a princess dance? What of the girls who can kill it on the soccer field and rip into a softball? What of the girls whose eyes shine at the thought of adventure and tromping through the woods? What of the girls who enjoy the sound of waves lapping gently at the shore while they wait for a tug on their fishing line?

For that matter, what of the boys who are interested in textile and fashion design and prefer less testosterony, Gladiator-like afternoons? What of the boys who enjoy choreographed dance and storytelling?

This camp is held in the very small community I grew up in. I personally know ALL of the high school graduates from the last 15 years or so. And you know what? Not a single one of us gals grew up to become a freaking princess. Not a one. We grew up to become teachers, lawyers, investigators, social workers, doctors, mothers, business women, chefs, policy makers & legislators, finance and accounting gurus, artists, writers…you get the idea.

If girls want to play with dolls and have tea parties, that is darling. My own four year old daughter loves to seat all of her plush toys and dolls around a little table in her room and host an afternoon tea at which she serves buttons, pennies, and nickels. And she loves art. And dance. and storytelling.

She also loves sports. And fishing. And exploring and adventure walks and all of the things that this tiny village seems to think requires stratification between the genders.  Couldn’t there have been a way to have Castle Camp (instead of Princess Camp), where the children of BOTH genders, design their own castles using recycled materials like boxes and paper towel rolls and construction paper? Or draw castle dragons and coat of arms on giant rolls of butcher paper? Create mosaic crowns? Participate in Royal Field Day where there are egg rolls and wheelbarrow races and waterballoon tosses? What about create a menu and songs for a castle feast where everyone dances after the dragon is captured?

And why does the exploration of Kohler Village necessitate the having of a penis? Couldn’t both genders attend Adventure Camp? I do not have a penis and I spent my entire youth getting eaten by mosquitos while I built forts in the woods, caught crayfish in Ravine Park, played soccer and baseball at Upper Lost Woods Park, and rode my bike to Woodlake to get ice cream and feed the fish stale bread.

Summer camp and the experiences it gives children for exploration, pushing boundaries, friendship making, leadership training, learning about nature, skill development, and overall providing of new opportunities should not be squandered and packaged into Pink and Blue Boxes.

We should never limit and label our children.

We should NEVER teach them to do it to each other.

Here are some other great posts about summer camp, and summer activities:

My Little Hen: “Be a Preservationist of Childhood Summers” Read here.

Rachel Simmons (with Michael Thompson: “Putting Camp In the Childhood Equation”  Read here.

Parenting Pink: “Tips for a Fun & Productive Summer With Your Daughter” Read here.