The Best Thing You Will Read Today June 8, 2011 Jill A column on princesses, ultimate fighting, bikinis and gender roles.
Saw this farther down on my reader. Seems related http://www.boingboing.net/2011/06/08/breastaurants-are-ho.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29
The combination of women’s sexualized bodies and male combat is a weird, counterintuitive pairing, like putting Tabasco sauce on a banana, but it’s damn near ubiquitous in our culture. I can’t believe I’ve never noticed this before in weddings.
So great. Thank you for the link. And yet, for some reason, we got a lot more business from them than we got from the little boys dressed as pirates. I’ve often wondered if there is something in our culture that teaches boys the lesson that they already know how to fight. At what ages does this lesson start? How is it imparted? I began wondering this about 10 years ago when I took boxing lessons. The women in my class were always much better than the men, mostly because our instructor had to spend half his time with the men un-doing bad habits formed of watching movies and TV. The men all thought they knew how to fight. The women were more open to actual instruction. I’ve read that little girls are more often told to “be nice” and little boys are encouraged to be tough. I try to tell my son to “be nice,” because he may be a boy but he’s still a human being.
I second her on really disliking the stylized presentation of female body-for-consumption that accompanies the prizefighting sports.
I was skeptical when you said it’s the best thing I’ll read all day. But now my skepticism is washed away because this article is awesome! Thanks for posting it 🙂
Meredith, my experience would agree with yours (I teach karate). On average, the girls are much better about listening to instruction and actually learning technique. The boys go in there and flail about (we call it the cosmic blender technique), thinking they’re being awesome ninjas. They don’t tend to learn better until someone their own age and size (usually one of the girls) knocks them on their butt a few times. I think they do think they must already know, since at least one of our boys who did this set out to learn Japanese on his own. He was definitely not averse to hard work or instruction – he just thought he already knew how to fight, whereas he knew he didn’t know Japanese.
I wonder too if part of the reason so many girls flocked to the instructors whereas the boys didn’t is because the instructors were female. Seeing women in that role might have encouraged more girls to see it as something they could legitimately do. I fear, though, that the boys didn’t see the women as legitimate instructors for such a “manly” pursuit, simply because karate is gendered male.
Guys, it’s really clear to me that the boys went for the popsicle sticks because they resembled spears, and evo psych teaches us that men are hardwired to hunt. But the cutest thing I have ever imagined is a bunch of toddler princesses karate kicking and yelling. I wish I had photos of myself doing this as a kid! (Not that I did it, but hypothetically!)
I really appreciate this article. I’m raising twins, a boy and a girl, who will turn 3 on Monday. We are constantly dealing with others’ opinions of what our children should be doing based on their sexes. I love meeting others who also resist strict gender roles for children. Nonetheless, I find that my daughter is learning more from her environment about what it means to be a girl than my son about what it means to be a boy. I find that HE has more freedom in play than she gives herself, although when he crosses what some may call “the line,” the looks are definitely weirder than when she does. Although I appreciate the notion that even at 6 and 7, their gender identities and the ability to dress up as whatever they please still exists, I also think it’s kind of naive. Even those who agree with me on these matters postpone introducing children to feminist concepts b/c “they won’t understand an abstract concept at that age,” but I fully disagree. Our values should be taught to our children from day 1. So even though they may not understand the theoretical concepts until later, they will know that this is just the way things have always been in their house. And hopefully, that will be enough to carry change over to the next generation.
My first thought is that the boys and girls were both attracted to things they don’t normally get to do. Boys? Plenty of encouragement to punch and kick things, let’s go glue popsicle sticks to things, that’s fun. Girls get plenty of encouragement to sit quietly and play nicely, so the martial arts was an opportunity for a departure of their normally enforced rules of play. When I took martial arts, I was never the instructor, but I was often paired off with newer students to teach them. The sensei and most of the other upper belts were female, and our consensus was that it was dangerous to teach white belts–somebody who didn’t know what they were doing is a lot more likely to accidentally injure you–but it was semi-terrifying to teach white belt /men./ They threw punches and flailed around so unnecessarily hard, you always felt like you were one misstep away from getting clocked, and your ability to knock them on your ass yourself was pretty irrelevant. I’m not really sure if that trend continues past being new; very few adult men stayed with the class. There were much more in the class next store, taught by a man (even though ironically that one was a soft martial art).