Baby Beauty Queens

While flipping through the channels the other night I stopped on one channel for a particular reason. This reason was because I saw little girls 12 and under competing for a beauty pageant crown! There were different sections of the competition and there was even a section for toddlers. How can a toddler compete in a pageant? The very young girls would get on stage and basically goof off, because of course they are not very good at dancing at a year old, then would exit with their moms smiling from ear to ear. They even had a section for babies! The mothers or fathers would dress their baby up and present them on stage. After watching this I realized this is another example of labeling a gender from the minute the baby is born. These babies were being dressed up in pink dresses even though they probably had no idea about the difference between boys and girls. I bet when these little girls grow up their view of the word female will mean, poised, gentle, kind, polite, etc. Although those are all good traits parents should not limit their childrens individuality by assigning them certain roles for their gender.

Spongebob as a mom :)

A couple days ago I was watching my all time favorite television show, Spongebob Squarepants. The episode was about how he and Patrick had found a baby oyster (or clam i'm not quite sure) and were going to raise it together. Spongebob immedietly filled the role of the woman and Patrick filled the role of the man. I found it interesting that the role of the woman, Spongebob, was to stay at home with the baby clam, and cook and clean all day. The role of the man, Patrick, was to go to work come home and expect dinner on the table. I thought to myself "hey this is not a good way to portray the roles of men and women to small children." I would not want my little girl to grow up thinking her only role in life was to serve a man. What child would want to grow up thinking "i'm going to grow up to cook, clean, and watch the kids!" Its amazing that society labels genders like this and incorporates them into even childrens television. But whats even worse is I associate certain chores around the house with each gender as well. I associate cooking with the woman and mowing the grass with the man. The way most of society wants to raise children is to label genders in this way, although i'm not sure why. This episode definately opened up my eyes in the way I view the jobs for each gender.