Iconoclastic

He Said:
Slugs, snails and puppy dog tails doesn’t seem entirely farfetched. My brother, when he was two years old, once popped a huge yellow slug into his mouth. At that age, you can’t have a rational motive to eat a slug – it’s got to be some kind of innate recognition of oneness.

Sugar, spice and everything nice, on the other hand, is best described as “Wishful thinking.”

For example: You have to walk past a strange large dog, which stares at you with an unreadable glint in its eye. Grinning ghoulishly, you repeat “Good dog!” over and over; not because you think the dog really is good, but because you are pleading with the dog to be a good dog, rather than the more realistic “unpredictable scary dog, who will shortly be using my gall bladder as a chew toy.”

Likewise, our nursery rhyme appeals to girls to be “everything nice,” rather than the more realistic “girl who will nag me until I develop an ulcer the size of a Frisbee.”

This is also known as “The Power of Positive Thinking,” or “Looking On The Bright Side,” or “Denial.”

We say things like “a woman would never start a war.” But I bet they have; they were just smart enough to get men to do the messy part.

Maybe an idealized image of women as angels helps mankind save face; if we have at least one “nice gender”, then humanity can’t be all that bad. The men slaughter each other, the women have tea parties, and things look pretty good on the whole.

Still, one gender shouldn’t be expected to represent niceness or not-niceness, sensitivity or toughness. We can find common ground only by recognizing our capacity for both. So let women have their puppy dog tails back. After all, as Kipling eloquently observed, “The female of the species is more deadly than the male.”

She Said:
My first reaction: the day they made me they’d run out of sugar, and added extra spice.

But really, I have to ask myself, do people still believe this stuff? To answer my question all I have to do is walk into the local Toys-R-Us and peruse the pink isles filled with dolls in lace, plastic make-up sets, and teddy bears or the blue isles filled with soldiers, guns and trucks. The children running through the store falling neatly into their gendered roles. Never straying into the opposite sexes colors section, wearing clothing appropriate to their sexual category, preparing to be productive members of future society. The segregation of the genders so blatantly apparent, it’s sickening!

With the advancements feminism has made, why do things still look the same?

As I am walking around observing, I see a little boy, who has strayed from his rightful place in the blue isles, and is sitting on the floor examining a box of makeup and hair accessories in an isle clearly marked pink. His father quickly walks up to him, shoves the box onto the nearest shelf, and tells him to go find his brother. He then looks at me, as if embarrassed, and says, “He knows his mother likes this stuff, he’s not gay or anything.” And then walks past me quickly. This boy had traveled into a world that was not meant for him, and the raised voices I heard a couple of isles over, in blue territory, told me he was being punished for inadvertently crossing the line.

They nursery rhyme is archaic, and outdated, and confining. And yet we, as a society, still hold it’s standards true. Little boys are supposed to play with frogs and snails and puppy dog tails, and little girls are supposed to be sugar and spice and everything nice. And if they go astray, we can always take them to the toy store, to teach them how to behave appropriately.

~ ~ ~

Men and women throughout the ages
Have had diverse points of view
Hers is this, His is that
Which one works for you?

His & Hers: a male vs. female point of view, appears every Monday right here at iconoclastic