Oh So Pretty

By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser

I once read that the best thing you could do for little girls is to refrain from commenting about how they look. At first blush, this might seem extreme. Stop for a moment and think about it; for many girls, how they look is not only the first thing people comment upon but the thing people comment upon most frequently. When you see a little girl, does something along the lines of “she’s pretty” or “what a cute pair of shoes” pop out of your (generally feminist) mouth? Once I started to notice what popped out of my (generally feminist) mouth, I realized that commenting upon clothing or hair is a pretty obvious icebreaker, in large part because so many girls are not so much dressed as decorated, coifed, and heavily accessorized. Unless they choose boys’ clothing (picture wide corduroy and khaki, loads of orange, dinosaurs, American ball sports, and some camouflage), girls these days aren’t left much choice. Peruse a children’s clothing catalogue and you’ll see a very pink and lavender, ruffled, flowered, flounced, cutesy selection of clothing replete with everything that supposedly characterizes girls: lollipops (sugar), sassy cuts like bell bottoms or midriff baring shirts or bikinis (spice), and horses, kittens, ballet dancers (everything nice). This point was driven home to me last year when my son, Remy, then three and I attended a fourth birthday party for his friend, Annie. Annie received not one, not two, but three purses. She also got jewelry and hair holders. The toys were limited to horses (which she loves), some dress up items, and collectibles. We brought books. No one gave her anything to do: no balls or puzzles or building toys or even art projects. I guess you could sum it up as pretty is as pretty does (or in this case, doesn’t).

Remy’s fourth birthday party loot, by contrast, included art supplies, building toys, a science experiment of a rocket that blasts off for real, a bicycle bell... You get the picture: active boys get active toys.

Ezekiel, now eleven, wanted long hair from the time he was in preschool. His younger brothers followed suit. Having been mistaken for girls for so long I can’t remember their gender being considered obvious, one thing that has been proven again and again; people do comment on pretty overwhelmingly as the icebreaker. They declare the boys, “sweet,” “adorable,” or in England this past summer, “darling.” Even on a beach vacation while wearing swim trunks, gender confusion persists. As girls, my kids are not only affirmed for being pretty but for being nice, friendly, good with younger children... Maybe boys identified as boys would be affirmed for these qualities. Often, after a person apologizes for seeing boy as girl, shifts in language define my child as “handsome,” “strong featured,” or “energetic.”

In actual fact, my kids are sweet, adorable, darling, handsome, strong featured and energetic. While I don’t think of them as extreme examples of gender neutrality, in an age attached to gender stereotyping, they really are. So, a challenge: next time you are about to make a pretty-based comment to a little girl, keep your (generally feminist) mouth shut for a moment. Then, see what else you might find to say.


Also by Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser,

Princesses Gone Wild

Room for Everyone: a Critique of Gender Binary Language

By E. Bestpitch

Historically, the universal person was always a "he" or "man." We read books to learn about mankind. Doctors, lawyers, technicians were referred to in textbooks and manuals as "he," whether females participated in these occupations or not. In fact, grammarians considered it incorrect to use anything but the "he" pronoun when referring to all of humankind, or a type of person generally. In the ‘60s, feminists advocated the use of gender-specific pronouns in order to increase fairness to women by acknowledging their role in historical and contemporary times. Since then, a politically driven reform to the English language mandated that the pronouns "he" and "she" would be used to refer to a specific gendered body, rather than having “he” refer to all gendered bodies. This is generally known as "gender fair" language.

While this language may be fair to those who identify as “she” and “he” by acknowledging both for their important roles in our society, the problem with these pronouns is exactly that: that they only recognize two types of people in our society—“he” and “she.” There are more than two kinds of gendered bodies. Yes, there are men and there are women. And there are genderqueers, genderfucks, androgynous people and many, many others who do not fully identify with “man/he” or “woman/she.” These are the folks who are now being ignored—disavowed from society through our binary language system. As a feminist, I fully support the goal that women be included in language and literature in order to recognize their achievements and contributions to our society. As a queer person, I am dismayed that people of all gendered expressions and identities are not being appropriately represented in text and everyday speech. This is why I advocate for the use of gender-neutral pronouns in our everyday lives.

Gender-neutrality in pronoun usage assures that people of all genders are being represented as we talk about people and humans in general. Using a gender-neutral pronoun (a popular one and my personal favorite is "zie," pronounced “zee”) not only eliminates a dominant gender (such as “he”) in language, but also prevents us from making assumptions about people’s gender identity without having asked. When was the last time you asked your friends what their preferred pronouns are?

To be truly fair to all of the variations of gendered bodies, gendered expressions, and gendered people, we must push our language further not only to include the socially constructed ideas of "man" and "woman", "he" and "she", but also to include all forms of gender expression in everyday language. The current dialogue around gender-neutral pronouns is generally used as one method to combat sexism in our patriarchal society. But all of the resources I have seen regarding gender-neutral pronouns avoid any discussion of a continuum of gendered expressions that cannot always be accurately described as "he" or "she.” Using gender-neutral language in everyday speech shifts the paradigm from gender binaries (s/he) to gender fluidities and allows for a wider range of genders to be respected and acknowledged in society.

In my quest for this "zie" revolution, I have come up against a slew of arguments, one in particular being that some want to be recognized by a specific gendered pronoun in order to associate with a social identity—a political, historical, and economical context—that adds meaning to their lives. I am certainly not trying to dissolve anybody’s personal identity; in fact, quite the opposite is true. I envision a society in which a person may be associated with a social group or identity of their choosing, rather than one in which a person is grouped with others based on assumptions about their personality, their look, their actions, their physical attributes. I, for one, am interested in being considered by more than the gendered pronoun that has been assigned to me at birth by the virtue of my genitalia, and I stand in solidarity with all the genderqueers, genderfucks, transfolk, and everyone and anyone else who does not fit in with societies traditional ideas of gender and sex by using gender-neutral pronouns.




RESOURCES

for more information on gender-neutral pronouns and their variations, check out wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronouns

for info on the history of gender-neutral pronouns, gender expression and language, and other resources, check these out:
http://www.rpi.edu/web/writingcenter/genderfair.html
Gender "fair" language

http://www.bartleby.com/64/5.html
American Heritage Book of English Usage: Gender

http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/language_gender,2.html
Women and language—social expression