Sunday, March 10, 2013

Going on about Christensen, a personal experience

The other day at work I had a little boy, probably about four or five years old, in my aisle at the market I work at.  He looked at me, turned to his mother and said: "Mommy, I can't tell if that's a boy or a girl."  I wasn't offended by it at all.  I could see why the boy was confused.  I am almost the exact opposite of how various forms of media depict young women.  I have short, almost messy dark hair as opposed to the long, pin-straight platinum-blond that you see in the media.  I don't wear any make-up at all.  Young women in the media are almost never seen without make-up on.  While young women in the media have thin, perfectly sculpted eyebrows, mine are rather bushy and unkempt.  Unlike in the media, I am not well endowed.  Unless I wear almost form-fitting shirts, I appear nearly flat chested (I'm not afraid to admit I'm flat chested).  The average cup-size in America is a 36C and I will admit to being a 32A (a size that is made for girls who are still developing).  There are almost no girls in the media who are like me.  Honestly, when was the last time a shorter-haired young woman appeared in a children's show, cartoon or otherwise?

 (A recent picture of me)

Several of my friends were outraged at the comment made about me, (My aunt went as far as saying: "What kind of a moron is he?") And I explained to them that children are honest, sometimes brutally honest. They don't have the filters that adults have and therefor they will say whatever happens to be on their minds.  Most adults wouldn't go up to an androgynous person and ask: "Are you a boy or a girl?"  But a young child would.  I'm sure that if the child was a little bit older and had to ability to read my rather long name (my younger brother called me Kaela until he was five because of the length of my name) he would have been able to deduce that I am female.  He wasn't trying to be rude.  He was just trying to figure something out in the only way he knew how.  By asking a question that few adults would dare to ask.    

2 comments:

  1. I enjoyed reading this blog so much Mikaela. Your story really captured me and I'm sorry if that comment offended you but I totally see where you are coming from. Children can be brutally honest and just say things how they are. Your post made me think of kids drawing pictures so I googled "child's drawing of a girl" and this is the second result http://depositphotos.com/5957735/stock-photo-Childs-drawing-a-girl-in-a-long-dress..html When children see women as princesses with long blonde hair, anything different may confuse them.

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