outside the (toy) box

The other day, I took Thing 1 to the doctor and she had to have her blood drawn by the phlebotomist.  By her account to my dh, she was “very brave,”  which is true only if you define brave as needing to be physically held down while bucking and screaming so that poor Nurse Dolores can get the needle in the vein. But pots should not call kettles black, so I will resist making fun of her (to her face).  At any rate, in the early negotiations (pre-physical coercion), Dolores promised dd that she could have FOUR of the large stickers that kids get on their way out.

So, Thing 1 had the great pleasure of sifting through the entire sand-pail of stickers (all licensed characters, btw, every one…no stars or rainbows or animals, just Barney, Transformers, etc.) to choose 4 stickers. This was a big decision and it took the 100 kazillion minutes that any parent of a young child would expect.  What made it especially difficult for her was that they seemed to be out of the ones targeted toward girls.  She found a Cinderella on a swing (a very wistful Cinderella, btw, looking sadly over her shoulder — maybe it’s hard to swing in a corset?  or she finds the glass slippers painful? has black lung disease from all that hearth tending in her youth?) which was a big hit, and then came up with a My Little Pony (or alien LSD horse, whichever), and then, ”BARBIE!” she squealed. This was interesting to me because I have never seen any sign of Barbie at school (they have a “no toys from home” rule) and I had never heard her mention the name before, so I was surprised she knew who she even was  (btw - Since she has never seen a Barbie commercial in her life, that’s 2 points for viral marketing — Is it possible to send her to a school without other kids?).  That was the end though — no others met her standards.  I offered up Bob the Builder.  Nope.  Tried Spongebob (what’s with the name Bob, anyway?). “I’m not that into Spongebob.”  Then she asked me to dig through and see if I could find a “really, really fancy one.”  They were gone (alas, no half naked sexed up Bratz dolls today).  The rest were, for her, disappointingly (I presume) interpreted as boy or babyish.  Bummer.   

But, I marvelled at this decision.  Even those people who believe that gender differences are primarily genetic would probably not argue that there is some gene that makes girls prefer pink or, in this case, prefer My Little Pony.  Yet, her preferences make sense. She associates the (socially defined) girly things with her friends at school, with her female cousins, with her babysitters and wants to be part of that.  What kid wouldn’t?  Afterall, a child’s first accomplishment is being a “big girl” or a “big boy” instead of the dreaded, “baby.” But, what is interesting to watch is the way that these patterns make such an impressively deep mark we internalize these preferences as our own.  She isn’t pretending to prefer the freaky LSD horse just to be like the kids at school, she doesprefer it.  Much like a favorite color.  From the time she could talk it was yellow (well, “lellow,” to keep the record accurate), but after she started school, she decided she has two favorite colors.  Guess what the second was?  Yep, pink.  How many boys would say pink is their favorite?