A few days ago we were all invited to take a trip inside an alternate reality and imagine what the world might look like if our sons were treated like our daughters, based on the story of Logan. It’s only fair, I think, to take another trip, inside another reality, and imagine what the world might look like if our daughters were treated like our sons.
Let’s start at the beginning, where a baby girl is born into a boys’ world and you, her mother, watch from the sideline.
In the womb: It’s time for the baby shower. Sports theme, of course, because she’s a girl, and of course it’s expected. Football at the top of the cake. Some soccer balls on the sides. A basketball in the center. Which one will she play? Everyone has a guess. Maybe it will be football, like you. You were pretty good in high school. She’ll probably be good, too, if the onesies have anything to say about it. “I get my muscles from my mom,” one says. “Future first-round draft pick,” another says. Of course she will be.
Birth: Welcome, baby girl! She’s finally here, two days late. Seven pounds. Bearing the name Eleanor, because it’s an old family name, and names were meant to be passed on. She’s healthy and tiny and perfect. “What a little beanpole,” they say when they see her. “It’s okay. She’ll chunk up fast.” Because she needs muscle and bulk, if she’s going to be a successful girl. She needs solid, because that’s what girls are. All those well-wishers wave her out of the hospital, saying, “We’ll see her on a court or a field someday. I just know it,” even while you think what lovely hands she has for piano or painting.
Age 1: Happy first, Eleanor! Here’s the party, with family and close friends, just a small thing, really, a cake decorated with Wonder Woman and Batgirl and Black Widow in skin-tight costumes that show muscle and bulk and everything it means to be a woman, presents wrapped in pink and never green or blue, which might confuse her about what kind of colors a girl should like. She opens her gifts, a soccer ball and a foam sword and a superhero cape, because little girls love to play tough. She tries out the sword, but it’s a little big, and she’s not completely steady on her feet yet, so she falls and skins her knee and starts crying. Everyone says, “You’re okay. It doesn’t hurt,” because she’ll have to learn that big girls don’t cry about silly things like falling over and skinning a knee. Big girls shake it off. Big girls toughen up.
Age 2: Eleanor’s a toddler now, learning about the world from whatever her hands touch and feel and explore. You want to show her how to put that train track together, but they say, no, she can figure it out, you don’t want her relying on someone else for her thinking. Girls think for themselves. The train station door is stuck and won’t let the train through? Well, just keep trying, Eleanor. And she will, because she’s persistent, until she throws it across the room and accidentally breaks a picture frame and gets a swat on the bottom for it. And don’t let her cry because it’s frustrating, even though it is. She needs to get a handle on those emotions. She needs to suck it up.
Age 3: Preschool days have come around. She likes making huge, tall buildings with the blocks. And when a boy comes and snatches one of the blocks she’s using right out of her hands, she takes it back. Only she does it a little too forcefully, and the boy falls over, screaming and crying. She sits in time out for three minutes and then does it all again. Three more minutes. And again. Three more minutes. They call you to come pick her up, because she’s “being a bully.”
Age 4: Every day Eleanor goes to Pre-K, but there are some problems. She can’t sit perfectly still on the carpet like all the little boys. She likes to play by herself because she’s tired of getting in trouble for taking back her blocks. Do normal kids have this much energy? Are normal kids this emotional? Are normal kids this secluded? Maybe she has ADHD. Maybe she has autism. Maybe we should worry.
Age 5: She made it to kindergarten! Time went by so fast! All her teachers are men, but she doesn’t mind, at least not yet. Except they tell her she’s too loud. She’s got too much energy. She needs to learn to reign in those emotions, still. So, to teach her, we’ll have her sit out of recess. We’ll have her do all her work in a corner of the classroom so she won’t be tempted to talk. We’ll have her stand in the line for lunch perfectly still and perfectly straight, so she can get enough practice doing what she’s told, and if she fails, if one foot gets out of line, she’ll sit at a lunch table by herself. Lunch isolation. That’ll teach her. Time with the school psychologist for extensive evaluations. That’ll teach her, too. Different is not tolerated.
Age 6: The tests came back! No autism or ADHD or learning disability. Only a very high, very unexpected IQ, with reading scores close to junior high school level. But girls don’t read well, so it was surely a mistake. Maybe a fluke in the test. After all, she’s only a first-grader. She loves art and she loves music and she loves running around at recess, but there isn’t much time in the day to do these things, because there are more important things to do. She likes to read, but surely it’s not at the level you, the parent, says it is, and the test was a fluke, so let’s give her these books that are way too easy for her so she fidgets and talks when she’s finished, and then she can sit out of recess again for her bad behavior.
Age 8: She’s getting older, and all these years of denying emotions are making her volatile. She explodes in class, collapsing in a heap of tears and is sent to the principal’s office, with a discipline write-up for “disturbing” the class. Three more times it happens, and then she gets in school suspension for three days. We will get a reign on these emotions. We will. Take away PE, take away recess, take away interaction with her classmates, and eventually she will learn. Girls don’t cry. Girls don’t explode. Girls stay calm and collected.
Age 11: It’s time for middle school. Once again, she’s surrounded by male teachers, and this time it matters, because there’s puberty and there are hormones and everything feels wild and out of control. She walks around with raging emotions and unbalanced hormones and a fever of anger because she’s denied those feelings for so long, but all she gets for her explosions is in school suspension or detention. No one thinks to help sort it all out, because she’s a girl, and girls can figure it out. She starts losing interest in her studies, because what’s the point, really. No one really likes her, because she doesn’t play sports like girls are supposed to. And even if she did, they’ve all been playing since they were 3. She’d never be able to catch up.
Age 14: She’s been taking art lessons for years, and she enjoys them more than anything, but art isn’t womanly, she’s told. She has to find some other, more masculine profession. Maybe she should just pick a sport and get it over with. Maybe she should take up welding. Maybe she should quit altogether. She has a friend who tried to slit her wrists, and she wonders what it would be like. Probably better than trying to stuff all these emotions and live up to the expectations of other people. She still wants to do well in school, but girls who do well in school are outcasts, teased mercilessly. She doesn’t have the emotional capacity to deal with teasing, so she just pretends she doesn’t already know all the answers.
Age 17: Time to apply for colleges, Eleanor! But she doesn’t want to go, because education long ago lost its lure for her. Who needs a degree? Not her. She probably wouldn’t be able to make it in college, anyway, since high school didn’t really turn out all that well. What if she fails? Women aren’t supposed to fail. What if she picks the wrong degree? There are only a handful of right ones, ones that could support a husband and a family like she’s supposed to do. Like she’s expected to do. It’s overwhelming. So she just doesn’t try.
Age 23: Eleanor is now an adult. She goes into her office five days a week, eight hours a day, like everyone taught her to do. She’s really starting to get a handle on her emotions now. When her dog died last year, she didn’t cry. When her dream job slipped through her fingers, she shook it off. When her boyfriend broke up with her, she didn’t feel the sadness. She just joined a friend at the bar. She took a drink. Two. Who knows how many.
Eleanor’s story and Logan’s story prove that both genders have a long way to go toward equality. There is much work to be done. There are many Eleanors, and there are many Logans, and they are all struggling to find their feet in their very different places and a society that does not always look kindly upon them.
Instead of denying that gender problems exist, maybe we should use our arguing energies to change a world that needs changing—for both genders.
