I disagree with you. The reason she's disappointed is because of stereotypes she has about girls:
"Girls have elaborate hairstyling requirements. They whine and mope, manipulate and triangulate. ... daily viewings of 'The Little Mermaid' ... 'she'll be quiet. Calm. Easy.'"
These are all stereotypes about girls. Biases about them. Because she has these ideas in her head, she's going to be raising the girl like this too, as a quiet demure thoughtless little doll.
I'm not saying her bias is intentional or uncommon. It's unfortunately way too common - if we didn't all have these biases in the first place, then she wouldn't have the experience that she describes about walking into a department store and finding only frilly pink things. And quite subconscious in most people. I feel we need to explore these things and become more aware of the expectations we are setting up for children (like telling boys they're strong and smart, and telling girls they're pretty and good) so that we can start to remove these biases and the barriers against children of all genders achieving anything at all.
Edit: One other thought. Prejudice or sexism doesn't need to be tangible events (such as abortion, giving books to boys and dolls to girls, beating someone, forbidding them from attending college or taking certain jobs). It can be even stronger when it's intangible such as telling someone they're not capable of something, or the example above of telling boys they're smart and telling girls they're pretty.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-04-30 05:53 pm (UTC)"Girls have elaborate hairstyling requirements. They whine and mope, manipulate and triangulate. ... daily viewings of 'The Little Mermaid' ... 'she'll be quiet. Calm. Easy.'"
These are all stereotypes about girls. Biases about them. Because she has these ideas in her head, she's going to be raising the girl like this too, as a quiet demure thoughtless little doll.
I'm not saying her bias is intentional or uncommon. It's unfortunately way too common - if we didn't all have these biases in the first place, then she wouldn't have the experience that she describes about walking into a department store and finding only frilly pink things. And quite subconscious in most people. I feel we need to explore these things and become more aware of the expectations we are setting up for children (like telling boys they're strong and smart, and telling girls they're pretty and good) so that we can start to remove these biases and the barriers against children of all genders achieving anything at all.
Edit: One other thought. Prejudice or sexism doesn't need to be tangible events (such as abortion, giving books to boys and dolls to girls, beating someone, forbidding them from attending college or taking certain jobs). It can be even stronger when it's intangible such as telling someone they're not capable of something, or the example above of telling boys they're smart and telling girls they're pretty.