Holy shit do not even get me started on how moms constantly police their sons’ masculinity. I’ve seen mothers do it WAY more often than fathers.
I used to work at a bakery that specialized in creating custom cakes. We had this feature where we could print out any image off the computer and put it on a cake (with rice paper). One day this lady comes in and asks for an image we had of the baby Sesame Street characters. They’re all together with cake and confetti, and she asks, “Oh, well since it’s a boy, can you please change all of the little pink confettis into blue confetti? I mean, he’s a boy, you know.”
It barely covered 5% of the image.
Another instance was when a lady asked me for an image of four superheroes to put on her son’s cake because her son was turning four. She admitted to not knowing any superheroes, so I offered the most obvious choice—The Fantastic Four. I pulled up a picture of them and she goes, “Oh no no, we can’t have that. Let’s do another one.” Confused, I pulled up a Justice League one with Batman, Superman, The Flash, and Wonder Woman. Again, she said no. I asked her if she needed anything specific (she didn’t know superheroes, why was she so picky?), and she just said, “Oh, it’s just that he’s a boy, you know? We can’t have a girl superhero on his cake.”
I nearly lost my shit. I did temporarily lose my customer service face and ask why, women have been superheroes all the time, Wonder Woman is iconic, etc etc and she was like, “It’s just that my son has been playing with Barbie dolls lately and I really don’t want him to end up… well, you know.”
This shit has got to stop. When you teach boys that certain things are only for girls, you’re limiting them and you’re teaching them that girls or “girly things” are bad. If you want gender equality as an adult, you better make DAMN sure that you’re teaching the same thing to your kids.
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