Despite the half-hour of entertainment it offered Beckett on a dull Saturday, the whole ordeal was cringey. The branding worked it’s magic, as Beckett vigorously flipped past the pink pages to any blue page with toys that say POW or VROOM.
I don’t know when he made those gender distinctions, but he was on board. I felt concerned that this world we’ve built for him limits him to “boy stuff” only.
I immediately thought back to Tomie dePaola’s Oliver Button Is A Sissy. Oliver Button was a little boy who was teased mercilessly because he loved to dance and draw and play with paper dolls. The boys in school even wrote “Oliver Button Is A Sissy” on the school wall. This precious child persisted, defying gender norms by just being a child at his own version of play. After performing a tap routine in a talent show, Oliver returned to school to see that some of the girls had boldly crossed out “sissy” and wrote “STAR.”
On my children’s literature tour in 2017 I had the pleasure of meeting the late Tomie dePaola at a book signing in New Hampshire. As he signed a box of Strega Nona paper dolls for me, he looked up and said, “This is all I wanted to do when I was growing up, play with dolls like this.”
All of a sudden I flashed back to Oliver Button Is A Sissy and realized who I was speaking to...
Oh, hi, Oliver Button, good to meet you.
So, for context, here we are with this children’s book about defying gender roles from 1979, which, presumptively, would have been reflective of dePaola’s childhood in the late 1930s, a time of highly defined gender expectations. For further context, RBG had just taken on gender equality in Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue seven years earlier in 1972.
And dePaola’s Oliver Button still danced and drew and played with paper dolls.
Beckett is Oliver Button’s age, and his baby brother is trailing right behind, wide-eyed at everything his brother does and every way we respond to him. They are going to do what their little hearts feel called to do. I just have to make sure that I’m writing STAR on the wall above their heads and teaching them to do the same for others.
No comments
Post a Comment