Dress shopping - Nature or Nurture?

I’m going to a formal tomorrow evening. This, on paper, is a simple thing – get dressed, go to the location, eat and chat with friends.  And if I was a dude, my husband for instance, it would be that easy.  But we know, as women, going to a formal event is not at all that simple.

Of course, there’s the constant girl question – what am I going to wear? Because I do not have a ready-to-go gown in my closet. Really. Okay, I do have a couple long dresses, however, they were purchased a couple years and a few more pounds ago.  And if its one thing you can’t hide too well in a formal gown – those extra bags of M&Ms and cupcakes.

My girlfriend (who is also going, and also without a dress) and I spent an evening dress shopping. (Also, a difference between males and females, as I’ve never not once known my husband to require a friend to go with him to find a suit.) We headed out, with all the parameters in mind for a new formal dress, because there’s a lot.  Like, color.  Red is pretty, but is it too bright, too sexy? Black is classic, but does it get boring. I love green, but going into fall, its got to be the right shade. Too old for a pink gown and too tall for yellow.  And fit, of course. And consideration of what types of Spanx are going to be required to actually wear the dress outside of a fitting room.  And price for this one occasion, because I don’t have another formal on my calendar in the foreseeable future.  We took all of that – and one mall, four department stores, and a bunch of specialty dress shops, later – we were still without dresses, with one maybe.  We had to finish that missions solo, due to our schedules, but we did each manage to find something pretty.

Now, the last minute girly part.  What jewelry will look good with the dress? What shoes will we wear? By some miracle, or perhaps a schedule to busy to allow for shoe shopping, I have a pair in my closet that will work with the dress.  Letting my nails dry while I type this blogpost.

What makes us this way? Is it genetic, that we girls have to be so – well, girly?  Or is it nurture? I’ve repeated this same dress shopping thing in the past few days with my daughter, because the homecoming dance is coming up (yeah, my daughter going to a homecoming dance, another anxiety attack, another blogpost.)  We did the thing – multiple stores, which color, blah blah blah.  My son, picking out clothes for anything, is like “give me the blue one.” Done.  So is it in her chromosomes that she felt like she needed a new dress, is it the way I’ve raised her, or some greater societal influence? 

While we think on that, I’ve got to go figure out what I’m going to do with my hair.

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5 Reasons You & I Are No Longer #Friends

Facebook is a funny cyber-world. We all go through some kind of thought process in “friend-ing” folks. Though every person’s criteria for clicking “accept” is different, there is some bar to be met.  On the other end, there’s the process of de-friending – the touchy, sensitive clicking someone off of your friend list, barring them from your timeline, never to know what you had for lunch again.  How many times have you seen someone post a message about being defriended?  Aren’t they so sad in their mystery and wondering why this happened to them?  I admit, I have defriended some folks. And perhaps, I have been defriended, too – but due to my tech-savviness, I don’t even know if I have been or not.

So for those who notice that you no longer see my smiling face or my status about my craziness, here are 5 reasons you may have been defriended.

You posted too many Scandal spoilers.  I wasn’t watching Scandal in season 1, so all the  posts were a mild annoyance filling up my timeline (and my Twitter feed). But by season 2, I was catching up and watching on demand. The posts weren’t so bad because I was so far behind, I didn’t know what folks were talking about yet, anyway. But now, that I am in the present season, but a few episodes behind – it’s killing me! Even if they aren’t intentional plot spoilers, I don’t want to know nothing.  All the posts of who is playing Olivia’s momma – come on, folks – I didn’t want to know her mom was going to even show up!  So, if you’re defriended, check your Scandal posts.

You posted the sex of your baby prior to its birth. Yeah, I’m one of those rare people who don’t want to know whether the baby is a boy or girl until it breathes oxygen in its lungs. I didn’t find out with any of my four and I don’t want to know any of my friends.  Yes, I did warn my god-daughter’s mother that she was free to post her sonogram if she wanted to, but if anyone commented on the gender, I was going to click the defriend button. Pregnant friends, you have been warned.

You complain too much. Oh, woe is me, nobody likes me, my life is awful, I’m so sad, but I’m not going to tell you why I’m singing the blues. Okay, then I can’t help you and you’re dragging me down. Click.  But you won’t notice anyway because you’ll be too busy waiting for comments that say “keep your head up,” “you gonna make it thru,” “I’m here for you.”  I can’t be there for you if I don’t know where you're at.

You posted too many long, sappy stories about God and faith that didn’t make any sense.  Now, I’m a Christian and I’m all for faithful encouragement, some of y’all’s Bible verses hit the mark for me on some days and I’m grateful for that unexpected little reminder and boost.  But some folks and their “true stories” of God’s will - you know the ones – they don’t build me up nor give me strength. They annoy me because they’re bad stories and I don’t believe them.  And they take up too much space on my little phone screen.

You have a perfect family.  Right now, there are towels on the bathroom floor, candy wrappers on the couch, a wet bathing suit in a swim bag, no milk in the fridge, and an unidentified pair of socks in my living room.  My kids didn’t eat their breakfast, didn’t like their lunch, and will demand pizza for dinner.  Within five minutes of being home from school, they will have argued with each other sibling, spilled a cup of apple juice, and asked me 100 questions.  Most of my week is spent as a pseudo-single mom because my husband’s job takes him to Texas or Paris or on long lunches in Virginia.  Your neat home, perfectly behaved children, happy date nights, and balanced meals affect my self-esteem.  My therapists said to defriend you.

You posted too many pictures of your pet cat. I don’t like cats. That’s all.  (I know, that makes 6, but I wanted you to know.)

If I have defriended you and you did not commit one of these atrocities, it could just be that I could not remember who you were and I needed to cull my friend list.  Nothing personal.  

Join the conversation on Facebook: Just Piddlin' with Frances - and I won't de-friend you!

Leave Barbie to Her Pink Kingdom

Barbie and I had to have a talk this morning, she was very nervous about losing her pink kingdom.  Why?  We heard about this “Let Toys Be Toys” campaign that encourages toy stores not to continue in “gender marketing”, i.e. putting all the boys toys together in the blue aisles and the girls toys together in the pink aisles.  And if you aren’t sure what “boys’ toys” are, that general means the G.I Joe’s, Nerf aresenal, trucks, and Legos.  The “girls’ toys” include Barbie, the big head doll for hairstyling, tea sets, and princess dress-up clothes.  The campaign has convinced Toys R’ Us – U.K. to get rid of the gender designations in their toy aisles.

Why do we want to move all the toys around and make it even harder to find anything?  Boys (usually) like playing with trucks, girls (generally) like to play with dolls.  Every now and then a boy will set up a tea party and a girl will shoot someone with a foam dart.  We’re all cool with that. Why do we have to rearrange the toy store so that we can’t find nothing during the frantic shopping for Christmas or 15 minutes before our kid’s friend’s birthday party?

It's so simple when all the pink stuff is in the same aisle.

The campaign encourages the stores to arrange toys by “theme or function.”  Isn’t that what the doll aisle and the truck aisle do already? Are we just complaining about the color of the sign at this point? All I know is, as a parent, shopping is quite easy when Barbie and her clothes and cars and horse and pets and friends are all under that bright pink banner. If she’s going to be hanging out with Batman and I’ve got to go to the next aisle to get her pink-mobile from next to the Bat-mobile, I’m gonna be even more frazzled than I usually am when I’m toy shopping.

Even by "theme," my daughter & son are still grabbing the "girl" and "boy" boxes, respectively.

This seems to be another case of where good ole’ fashioned parenting could step in, instead of upsetting everyone else’s life. If you want your son to bake some cookies in the Easy Bake Oven and your daughter to push around a dumptruck, here’s an idea.  Ready? Buy it for them. What about that? You can buy your kid whatever toy you want to, no matter what aisle it’s in, no matter what you think the toy store is forcing upon you. You, mom and dad, get to choose what you spend your hard-earned money or the giftcard from Grandma on. Get your son the toy vacuum and pick up the box of Legos for your daughter. You will not be tackled by the toy police.

Do we really think that by rearranging the toy store, our daughters are going to pick up the tool set and our sons are going to choose the purse set?  I’m not so sure about that. I think it has more to do with the message that we send them at home.  It’s up to you as a parent to convey to your kids that girls can fix stuff around the house and ride skateboards and boys can cook dinner and take care of the coo-ing baby doll. If that’s what you want them to believe, you’ve got to invite your girl into your real garage and your boy into your real kitchen.

We can’t let the toy stores raise our kids. Otherwise, they’ll all think that you can cook anything with a lightbulb and that bullets stick to you with suction cups and no-one gets hurt in warfare.

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Let Girls Be Girls

I spotted this t-shirt for sale at one of my daughter's all-girls basketball tournaments.  It's catchy, but what's it mean?  What is the subtle message we're sending?  "It's one thing to be a great girl, but that means nothing if you can't hang with the boys."

What's the message we're sending our girls?

There seems to be a popular notion that being able to keep up with the boys makes a girl better.  For all we talk about girls being equal, just as smart, strong, athletic as the boys, we  still push for the opportunity to prove our girls by hanging with the boys.  We don't want pink & frilly stuff, we want what the boys have.

Consider the big deal made over the woman who went out to be an NFL kicker. She played soccer, but that wasn't good enough, she was going for a man's job; she didn't make it.  Or the debate whether the top girl college basketball players should forego the WNBA and try-out for the NBA.  What's wrong with playing in the WNBA and being a darn good woman basketball player?  Difference in salary aside, why do they have to prove their skill by competing with Labron and Kobe?

By nature, we are, on average, the smaller, less aggressive sex, yet we want our girls to compete with and be more like the males of our species.  We don't do this to our boys.  When was the last time you heard of parents petitioning for their son to play on the girl's softball team or a male golfer to ask to hit from the women's tee?  No, no, no, that would show some kind of weakness.  What dad would buy their son the t-shirt pictured if it had the reverse message "act like a boy, play like a girl"?

Yes, there are girls that can hang with the boys.  Getting Venus, Serena, Nadal, and Federer one one court would be a great match to watch.  And it'd be fun to watch fellow Blue Hen, Della Donne and Skylar Diggins and Brittney Griner play 3-on-3 with some of the big boys.  But not to prove anything.  Not because the girls need to validate their worth and their skill.  They've already done that.  They've already proved they are great women athletes.  They don't need to also be a great male athletes.

We need to send our girls a different message.

"Act like a girl. Play like a girl. Be proud to be a girl."

Gender Confusion On the Court

Aside from that small percentage of parents who refuse to identify their children as a boy or girl and want to keep their family and friends guessing in order to not put any gender stereotypes upon their child (what, you heard some sarcasm there?) - the rest of us prefer and assume that it's pretty clear which of our children are our daughters and our sons.  But what happens when that's not so obvious?

My daughter had a tennis match the other day - nothing unusual there.  But here's the interesting part.  When we were going over the line-up, I looked at her opponent's name.  Let's say, for sake of this discussion, the name was "Marsha". The other captain said "she's running late but on her way." As we walked out to the courts, we noticed there was someone else on the court with my daughter and the captain said, "oh, I guess she's here."  So good, so far.  I walked over to my daughter's court and glanced at her opponent.  And it's a boy, or so it appeared to me and my husband.  Maybe the kid's name is "Marshall" not Marsha, I thought and the team captain made an error.  I said to the kid, "hey, I want to make sure everyone's on the right court. What's your name?" In a voice that had a little more bass than a typical girl, her opponent said "Marsha."  Okay.

Marsha was dressed in that androgynous sports uniform kids wear - sports shorts and generic sports logo tee and had short-ish hair.  And typical of a 13-14 year old, Marsha had a pretty straight body build, not particularly muscular or curvy.  But Marsha swung a tennis racket like a boy.

Just a note - don't get upset - yes, I have watched enough kids' tennis to differentiate between a girl's swing and a boy's. There are other girls that I know that "hit like a boy", too, but they are more, shall I say, noticeably a girl - for instance, they were tennis skirts and headbands.  Okay, back to my story...

I noticed Marsha's mother speaking in a different language, but I couldn't really hear her.  Maybe, I thought, this is a foreign name, too, and in that country, it's a masculine name.  My daughter said they were speaking in Spanish and a boy's name would not end in "a" (2 years of Spanish and she thinks she's an expert).  Whatever, he was a boy, I had determined.  And to prove my point - we checked the team roster.  Next to Marsha's name, under gender was listed "F".

This is not the first time we've had this confusion.  In several basketball games - which are all girls teams - there's been someone on the other team that has caused a double-take as we parents wondered, "do they have a boy on their team?"  Even on her own team, one of the players cut her hair real short and we didn't recognize her when she came to practice, thinking perhaps it was a boy cousin or friend. and I have even teased my own daughter that with her hair braided and in her preferred boy basketball shorts, she would make a cute little boy.

This gender confusion is bearable when the kid is like 3 months old.  But even then, we get kinda annoyed when a stranger asks whether our baby dolled up in pink is a boy or girl.  I know I did. And at least at 3 months old, the kid doesn't know or care that you asked.  It could be more than annoying, it could be downright embarrassing - to the parent and the kid, when you're asking about a 13 year old.  Nobody wants to hurt a kid's feelings.

This tennis season, it's not a rule issue, boys can play girls; but in the next season, matches are gender specific, i.e. girls play girls, boys play boys.  What if they are paired again? I imagine that I will go by whatever the team captain puts on the sheet, whether Marsha is listed for the boys' match or girls'.  Right?

So, dear reader, I pose this question to you.  Is there a tactful way to ask someone the gender of their not-infant child?  Have you ever been asked and how did you respond?