Cars or Princesses? - Macchine o Principesse?

I know this will sound like a posting from 1955 but unfortunately, since then, not much has changed. I was thinking about toys, after reading a mom's comment on Facebook and after visiting a few toy stores to find a gift for Tronk's birthday. I was thinking about the long shelves filled with toys, all rigorously grouped by genre: boys here, girls there. Cars, monsters and robots for boys; dolls, dolls' houses, strollers, mini washing machines, and dolls related things for girls. Almost as if they were saying: "You, girls, the ones with the maternal instinct, take care of the children and do the house chores! You, boys, go have fun and play with the cars, machines and gadgets!". All right, all right, this sounds a bit extreme, but you know what I am trying to say. All toys are grouped by genre and color coded to draw the attention of both the parents and the children to a genre specific section. I have never thought about this until now.

Not for Boys. Sorry.

 

Not for Girls. Sorry.

Yet, I ask myself how many of these genre specific choices are not also a bit natural. I mean, my three year old boy has played with dolls three or four times in his life; once he put a baby in a high chair and prepared dinner for him,  he pushed a baby in a shopping cart a couple of times, and once I saw him intrigued by the look of a naked Barbie that came out of a pirate ship. I would have not stopped him to play with other dolls if he had chosen to do so. But he didn't. Like most boys I know and regularly meet at the playground, he naturally developed an interest for cars and trains. Not so much for tractors and bulldozers. He has now moved onto legos (which I like much better than cars). His girlfriends? According to their mothers, they are all moving onto dolls and princesses but, as far as I know, nobody imposed this choice to them. So, tell me, what are the boundaries between what has been imposed by society and the natural disposition of both boys and girls towards genre specific toys?

An answer to this has come from the AIJU, a Spanish private, non-profit organization that promotes research on children and play. The AIJU studied 1507 children consisting of 757 boys and 750 girls. They found that princesses, fashion and personal appearance interest more than 95% of girls while boys are more attracted to sports and watching TV. Not surprising. They also found that technologies (computers, cell phones, video games and any new technology) interest both boys and girls equally. I bet the toy companies know this. Yet, they regularly assign genre specific colors and characters to the high tech toys as well. So, if you have a girl, you are stuck with either Cinderella and Snow White for long long time. If you have a boy, you should hope that Cars and Winnie The Pooh are still around, otherwise your house will get filled with monsters.

Who said that men and women are equal? - Chi ha detto che uomini e donne hanno pari opportunita'?

Men and women are equal and have equal opportunities. Yeah, sure. Only a career woman chasing her dream job could come up with such a lie. Really.

Bullshit. Men and women are NOT equal. At least it isn't true for most women. As a friend often said to me in London, women, whether they like it or not, are made to have (and raise) children. Having and raising babies should become their top priority, whether they like it or not. I remember my friend saying: "You are a girl, not a boy. Don't kill yourself with work. Come out with us. Do what the girls do! Sorry to disappoint you but, whether you like it or not, women are made to experience the joy of (or bear the cross of) motherhood!"

I also remember the words of my first landlord, a Turkish woman in her fifties with long dark hair. "Don't waste your time studying. One day, you'll meet a nice man and that's it. You'll have a bambino and all your efforts, gone! " I remember trying not to laugh at her. What a backward, sexist, narrow-minded loser. 

Yet last night, those remarks were haunting me. I could not let them go.

Yesterday, I went to see my gynecologist and soon after found myself in such excruciating pain I couldn't breathe. They gave me the highest dosage of Motrin allowed and it still took an hour for my cramps to subside enough so that I could leave. No, I am not pregnant with a second child. No. Three months after I gave birth to William, in order to avoid unexpected children, the gynecologist persuaded me (with all the good things she said) to have an IUD put in place... Yes, the one with hormones. The alternative choices would have been (1) go back to the unbearable devastating side-effects of the past birth control methods I used, or  (2) accept the risk that I might become pregnant again and resign myself to the idea that my London friend is right - women are made to have and raise babies, whether they like it or not.

Although there were few problems for the first two years, the IUD has turned out to be as bad, if not worse, than any of the other birth control methods I have used in the past. Recently, I have even come to feel that it has played a role in my difficulties in walking and the mysterious swelling in my extremities. So I went to see the gynecologist to ask her to have it removed.

So yesterday, after screaming several times while the gynecologist was trying hard to remove the damned thing, each time without the slightest hint of success, I finally had to settle with cramps up to my throat and with a half a smile on her face, while she was making her conclusive comment: 

"I am sorry to have to tell you this, but one option could be to take you up o the 8th floor to have it removed in the surgery while you are asleep. Sorry, but I don't know what else to do". On that same day, I had just finished reading a list of horror stories, written by women, on this particular worse case scenario. 


Back home, in addition to dealing with all this, here he was, my three year old, more upset than ever, as a result of seeing me in so much pain.
 

And then they say that women are equal to men?

De Gustibus! is a relative concept - De Gustibus! e' un concetto relativo

"Dress Casual!", says every store I visit

I cannot continue to make fun of the Bostonian fashion. In the last six months or so I noticed a strange phenomena in my wardrobe. It slowly seemed to have changed from a well of colorful treasures to a closet that I barely recognize. I pick one thing, then another, then another, yet I don't seem to be able to find anything I fancy wearing.

Something similar happened to me when I moved to London. After only a year I was living there, I couldn't help finding stuff that I wasn't keen to wear, mostly large, straight cut Italian garments. Although classy, they were ideally suited to old Italian widows crying behind a Saint in religious processions. "Io quella pelliccia li' che mi hai dato per Natale non la indossero' mai! Guarda che vivo in Inghilterra, non in Italia! De Gustibus Mamma!" (There is no way I will wear that furry coat you have just given me for Christmas!  Don't forget I live in England, not in Italy! De Gustibus Mom! ) Amazing how perspectives and matters of taste change relatively to the country where you live. Winter was not winter in London without me wearing my extra small double breasted long black coat alongside my chunky black leather boots. Similarly, summer was not summer in Ireland without me wearing my khaki Capri pants with cargo pockets. Funny how I used to dislike those before moving to Ireland! Same with my pairs of big ass Indian women's pants I could not do without when I was living in New Delhi. I was keeping them in my wardrobe hoping to find an occasion to wear them. Few months after my return in the UK, I remember hiding those pants in a suitcase on top of the wardrobe.

I now look at the first shelf of my wardrobe and all I am able to find is a pile of long sleeved striped tops. If they don't have big ass stripes either in the colors or in the pattern  - not that the prep thin blue stripes on a cream color from Anthopologie look any more stylish! - they have a washed out look from the colors fading away or some other hippie details which make my clothes look all old and worn out. Then on the top shelf, I see a couple of intimidating looking polos starring at me as if they were saying: "I know I am casual but at least I am plain! Go on, wear me! ". Then my eyes go to the bottom shelf of my wardrobe and I see a large collection of tee-shirts with either sport themes or comics printed on them, the sort of thing which only children would wear these days in Italy.  What happened to my former look?

Buy them, use them and chuck them away. Understood?

Yet another top with stripes, just more expensive

Here in the US I simply cannot help sticking everything in the washing machine and in the dryer constantly. As a result, the nice sweaters I used to wear (and not wash) in London have now all turned into rags for cleaning floors. How about my pretty tops and dresses from French Connection and Monsoon? Where are they? They are in the attic, for this simple reason. What is the point of wearing expensive and uncomfortable clothes to cook spaghetti ragu', to walk in neighborhoods where there are only houses and few people jogging in sweats and to wash dirty clothes? See what I mean? There is no point.

And, to tell you the truth, now that I have a broken sesamoid in my left foot I cannot help but praising the advantages of the Bostonian look. Quick and easy and, above all, pain free! And now, if you would like to excuse me, I am going to the nearest mall to see if I can buy more tops with stripes to put in my wardrobe.