A Girl is a Girl is a Girl

Lately, I've been seeing the enlightened denizens of the internet spreading post after post praising young girls who are defying their traditional gender roles.  Now, while I love what these girls are doing, these memes are starting to get my feminist hackles up.  Why? There's no balance! Every single one of these articles or memes I see glorifies the tom-boy but not a one glorifies the strength of a girly-girl.  Worse still, the comments are all filled with adult womens' vitriol towards dolls and dress-up side by side with their praise of girls who want to play sports or do math...


Here's my perspective: The J-Rex, though she loves science and has no problem picking up a worm to save it from a sunny sidewalk, is, overall, the girly-girl I never was.  She loves to wear skirts and dresses, enjoys playing with dolls and My Little Ponies, doesn't like getting dirty, is a complete romantic, and can squeal with the best of them when either faced with a "scary" bug or delighted by something incredibly "cute."  She is as strong in her girliness as she is strong in her more tom-boyish qualities (such as her penchant for extinct predators).  She is who she is and she is unbound by any concept of what she should or should not be, whether it is based on her gender, her disability, or any other category she belongs to.

I will not teach my child that she "should" be anything.  I will not teach her that she needs to follow traditional gender roles but neither will I teach her that she must find her happiness in things that defy those same roles.  I will not show her that tomboys are cooler than girly-girls just as I will not show her that girls should "act like girls."  I will not teach her to be aggressive or sporty or geeky if she is naturally inclined to be shy and still and artsy (in the J-Rex's case, she actually is pretty sporty and geeky, but that's beside the point).  I will not even teach her she has to be strong when she feels weak because what I will teach her is that she is perfect just the way she is. 

That's my soapbox and I'm sticking to it.