“Not the pink giraffe,” a father will often say with a note of fear in his voice, steering his chubby-cheeked little boy away from the stuffed animal he was trying to hug. “Look at this yellow one, over here!”
Comments like this are ones I hear everyday at my summer employment. Although there is no correlation between your genitalia and what you’re supposed to like, I hear people relating those factors all the time. This has big implications when you realize these moulds affect people for the rest of their lives, especially in post-secondary education.
There are more males in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields and more females in the arts. This is a true fact in Canada and pretty much everywhere else in the world.
According to a 2015 report in Maclean’s magazine, women make up 66 per cent of all non-STEM graduates, but only 39 per cent of STEM graduates. Sure, the composition in your science classes may be shifting, but it still has a long way to go. The way to change this is by breaking gender roles as early as childhood. Gender roles start as early as girls being dressed in pink and boys in blue.
We spend a lot of time talking about how girls are guided away from subjects like math and science and are told to invest their time and energy in more “feminine” subjects, like art or English.
However, your genitalia does not have an all-encompassing effect on what you should like or what you’re good at in school. The cause for the drastic lack of gender diversity in academia is social in nature.
While this process most obviously inhibits women when they aren’t encouraged to pursue many disciplines and may face any level of discrimination and sexism, it is important to consider the toxicity of the masculine ideal and the impossible pressure that is placed on young boys to cultivate themselves in that image.
As a society, we’ve been so focused on establishing “girl” and “guy” things, from toys to entire fields of study, that we’re left with narrow boxes that kids are supposed to fold themselves up into, for fear of otherwise being ridiculed or shamed.
As someone who works in retail at a children’s park, I’ve come to realize that the beginnings of the boxing process often begins with a child’s parent. When a boy of about 10 chooses the pink cotton candy over the blue in the neighbouring food section, his mother is incredulous.
Could someone tell me what the issue is with the colour pink? Why is it so forbidden to so many boys? Are parents afraid that their son liking pink was a secret signal to the world that they were gay? Is there just a prevailing sense of wrongness to it, in their minds? Do they think it makes them seem weaker? Are they afraid of the reaction of other kids? Also, if it’s about being gay, what’s wrong with being gay?
Your toddler-aged son wanting a toy made in the pale red that makes up “pink” is hardly a reliable indicator of his sexuality, one that he was born with anyways and cannot be changed by you steering him towards other options in blue.
Pink is only the tip of the iceberg. Butterflies are another huge no-no; I’ve seen little boys try to choose to get a butterfly painted on their cheek, only for their parents to vehemently refuse to let them.
This one is a true enigma to me. It’s a bug. Aren’t those masculinity-approved? Is it only masculine if you’re, I don’t know, squishing them or poking them with a stick? I want to know what’s wrong with liking an aesthetically pleasing insect.
If you’re wondering why there are less women in STEM fields, and men in more artistic programs, this is where it starts. Instead of worrying about what their child is interested in, parents police their children into conforming to outdated and limiting gender norms.
Parents, please don’t restrain your kids to fit in a box, raise boys and girls the same way, and let your little boys love their damn butterflies.
