Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

As the mother of a five-year-old boy, I often find myself having conversations with other parents about gender differences. Of course being the liberal-minded people we are, we've all made our attempts to bring our children up as "gender neutral" as possible. But by now we've all pretty much given up on believing we're making any real progress. Just regarding looks alone, my son doesn't seem to have a self-conscious bone in his body. He doesn't care what he's wearing, as long as it keeps him temperature regulated and doesn't itch or annoy him. Sure, he has favorite clothes, a Darth Vadar shirt, a shirt with pool balls or a bowling pin on it, things that remind him of activities he likes. But he's not bothered if he's not wearing these, and surely doesn't know or care about whether his shirt "matches" or coordinates with his pants (all with the knees ripped out), or mismatched socks. He absolutely HATES having his hair brushed and gives no thought to the style or whether it's a mess. He'd be happy to never change his underwear or socks...

You may think this is because (he's a boy, and so) no one ever makes comments about his looks, and so he's never been lead to think his appearance is important, but I assure you this is not the case. He's blonde-haired and blue-eyed and has ALWAYS gotten plenty of "attention" for his (good) looks (don't even get me started with this seemingly universal obsession with the blonde, blue-eyed thing. Suffice it to say, these toe-headed children get more than their fair share of attention simply because of what they were born with. Blondes may not have more fun, but they certainly garner a LOT of attention.).

There have been exactly two occassions when my son dressed himself and asked, "Do I look handsome?" Which floored both my husband and me. But he didn't seem to have any investment in whether it did or not. It seemed more like he was trying to please us by showing that he'd managed to get himself ready, and looking "handsome" meant clean and dressed and ready to go.

From what I can see, none of his self-esteem seems to be tied to his looks or dress.

Oh how I envy him this unselfconsciousness! It is a state that I cannot remember ever having known.

The little girls in his class don't have it so easy. At five they are already keenly aware of their looks and dress. There seems to be a strict and rigid code for what they can wear (established by? and enforced by?). Every mother of a girl I know has mentioned the HOURS they have to spend sometimes getting their daughters dressed and out the door. Hours spent trying on every single thing in their closets before finally finding something "acceptable" to the girl.

And what of the girls who try to step outside the code?

I was standing with one little girl's mother at the playground one day and the mother was telling me that her daughter absolutely refused to wear anything that is not pink or purple. Hoping to expand her daughter's ideas, the mother pointed to her daughter's best friend (whom the girl looked up to) and said, "Look at Jane's outfit, isn't it lovely?" pointing to the adorable forest green outfit Jane was wearing. To which her daughter responded, "Oh Mom, it's so ugly. I feel so bad for Jane. Do you think that I should tell how awful she looks?"

These girls are FIVE!

One day I overheard another five-year-old girl ask her mother if she "looked fat", which of course mortified her mother, who couldn't help but wonder where her daughter was getting this. Not at home. But of course it's not at home. It's all around us. And while my son has the luxury of growing up worrying about whether he's smarter and stronger and faster than everyone else, and "good" looks are just the cream on top, these little girls already give their looks primacy. And why not?

Recently, I saw a video/ad/infomercial/art piece called Beauty Kit by the Parisian digital arts collective, Pleix, featured in Look Pretty! Feel Beautiful! on Worn Fshion Mag's blog.

Created in 2001...the video below shows a series of four imagined “Beauty Kits for Little Girls” containing DIY beauty treatments. But rather than the customary cheap-makeup-and-nail-polish combos, these kits promise breast implants, liposuction, rhinoplasty, and cosmetic dental surgery.

Part kitschy vintage ad, part modern infomercial, the piece takes you through step-by-step guides, juxtaposing playful music, simple images and rudimentary drawings with creepy flashes of bloody scalpels and bone fragments. It’s both amusing and disturbing – an apt commentary on an increasing appetite for and obsession with (arbitrary) aesthetic perfection that, at this point, seems to claim its acolytes almost in infancy.

Warning: it's kind of gross, but not nearly as gross as the fact that we are still teaching younger and younger girls, and women, that it may be necessary to take such extremes to feel "beautiful".