The reason for my aversion to girliness has a very simple source: my big brother. My siblings are both quite a bit older than me. My sister is ten years older and my brother is seven. While my sister was never a playmate of mine, having more important older-sister things to focus her attention on like sports and boys, there was a brief time in my childhood where my brother was my best friend. I don’t think he was always thrilled about that, but I was small and our mom probably made him play with me.
This arrangement changed somewhere around the time puberty took him into its clutches and made him too cool for his little sister, at which point he became my enemy. However, this didn’t occur for a few years, so he still had a lot of time confuse me about gender roles first. When I was little I loved matchbox cars and GI Joes and Legos. I also liked My Little Ponies and stuffed animals, but that was about as far as I ventured into the strange land of females. In the meantime I ran around pretending to be Batman and shooting bad guys.
After ample time of cementing that girlie things were to be avoided, my fourth birthday came around. Oh, I should also mention three other important details: 1) my birthday is the day before my grandmother’s birthday; 2) my grandmother had 7 children and therefore has a huge family; and 3) I was a tragically shy child.
We were attending a celebration of my grandmother’s birthday at my aunt and uncle’s house and sometimes my family members would also bring me cards and presents because it was my birthday too and I was little and when you’re little presents are about the most exciting thing in the world next to candy and scenarios involving dirt and potentially scraped knees.
One of my cousins was thoughtful enough to bring me a present. As children are wont to do, I plopped down in the middle of the floor with my dad, forgetting for a moment my crippling shyness, and proceeded to tear open the wrapping paper.
I glimpsed what was under the paper.
I looked at my dad.
I looked back at the box.
This was not at all what I was expecting.
Sometimes I think that seeing a present and knowing it’s for you is almost better than actually opening the present. The anticipation is so exciting you can hardly contain yourself. It’s like being a kid at Grandma’s house during Christmas and looking at the heap of presents under the Christmas tree and just knowing that some of them are for you and also knowing that you aren’t allowed to open them until after dinner and then it’s after dinner but the adults have to clean up the mess and you’re just drooling all over yourself in excitement and poking at the presents but then someone tells you to quit poking at the presents and sit down and wait quietly but you’re so excited that you bounce in the chair and ask if they’re almost done every 42 seconds and then finally, FINALLY, everyone is sitting down and presents are being passed out and you know one of them is coming your way but you have to watch everyone else open their presents one at a time while pretending to pay attention and trying not to explode into a big puddle of goo from the anticipation and then it’s finally your turn and one of them is passed to you and everyone is watching to see your awesome new stuff and you’re so excited you just want to poop and then you tear open the wrapping paper in a flurry of Santa-shaped confetti and then rip open the box with fingernails and teeth and pull it out and it’s… it’s… IT’S…..
Underwear.
Really, Grandma? Really? I’m 8 and you bought me underwear to open in front of all my relatives? This happened every Christmas and I would always just put it back in the wrapping paper and hide it, hoping no one noticed my shame in getting underwear. I probably would have jumped for joy about getting underwear instead of a doll though.
So there I am, four years old, and anticipating the glory that is my present with all of my relatives watching including my cousin that just knows I’m going to love it, and I look inside and see that it’s a doll.
A doll. I’ve spent my entire life, all four long years of it, trying to hide the fact that I am female. And there it is, smiling at me through the plastic protection, pointing to the fact that I am definitely a girl, and what do girls like to play with? Dolls.
I flipped the box over it and took excessive care to ever so slowly peel back one tiny strip of paper to buy myself time. I lean over to my dad, who I know is there to protect me in my time of need, and I am panicking because I don’t want a doll, I just want GI Joes like they gave me earlier that day because they understand me. With tears in my eyes because I’m devastated that this present is such a disappointment, I whisper with all my powers of shy, four-year-old discretion, “I don’t like it.” And what does dad say to his little girl?
(There is actually a video of this incident, and in it he’s being nice and encouraging, but this is what it looked like to me in my four-year-old world. Also, he doesn’t actually have hair made of fire, but how cool would that be? Hi Dad, I love you!)
Now I know I have to keep the doll. I have to like it. There’s no other option. I will be branded a girlie girl and my friends (who are all boys) will shun me for the pink-dress-wearing, doll-loving, baby-kissing female I am and I won't ever be allowed to wear the batman cape again. It’s all just too much.
I bury my head in my hands and start to cry.
And all the while my relatives are standing around waiting to see what’s in the box, and then they’re confused because I’m crying even though there is a half-unwrapped present in my lap and I should be finishing the unwrapping process because kids love presents. That’s when they find out I don’t like dolls and my poor thoughtful cousin feels awful for bringing such shame upon me. They all stand around awkwardly as I cry about my doll.
Later my mom tells me about etiquette. She says that we just say “Thank you for the present” and return it later for something more awesome.
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