I am a girly girl but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating
circumstances except that I have three older brothers.
I remember the day I became aware of the shamefulness of my
condition. Before then, I had been ignorant. I did not know that if I liked
pink, I fit into the abhorrent stereotype. And I loved pink.
I also loved to
play dress up—donning a fluffy pink dress with roses perched on puffy sleeves.
The sleeves released a rich scent when fluffed, like an old-fashioned perfume
bottle. I didn’t mind that the scent was the mothball kind that prevails at
rummage sales. Once I put on that aromatic dress, I was a princess. Turquoise
high heels and a glitzy gold purse were the last touches of royalty. Then, of
course, I would click downstairs in a stately manner so that everyone could
admire me, which they obediently did.
Of course, as royalty, I also held many tea parties with my
subjects and fellow princesses. I did not have to drink tea as long as my sugar
water and snow-white slice of Styrofoam toast were in a pretty teapot or plate.
Yet I knew that my tea table would never be complete until an American Girl
Doll also presided at it. So I prayed every night that God would send me an
American Girl Doll, and when I was six, blue-eyed Kirsten arrived in a white
cardboard box at Christmas.
Here at last was a friend who understood me and my
need to care for somebody! I dressed her in many outfits and learned how to
give her every hair-do imaginable. I didn’t explain to her why I did this, but
her blue eyes blinked understandingly.
But one day, all that changed. When I was nine, my family visited
some friends in Florida who had two children. The girl, Naomi, had dark hair
that dipped into her face, and she always beat me at basketball and checkers. I
had just lost another game of checkers to Naomi when her brother Johnny came grinning
up to me.
“I bet,” he said, “you’re the kind of girl who plays with dolls.”
He scrunched up his eyes and giggled, and a drop of drool trickled from his
lips.
“Johnny, be quiet,” Naomi ordered, too late.
“I do not,” I replied, offended by the accusation.
Technically, I only do Kirsten’s
hair these days, so I’m not lying.
But
I was.
Johnny’s words were a lightbulb. Suddenly, I understood that I was
not just a girl, but a girly girl—the kind who lost at basketball and checkers
because she played with dolls. And, while no one would snicker at a boy playing
with a toy truck, everyone would wink and point if they saw me with a doll. I
couldn’t be myself if I wanted the world to like me; I needed to pretend to be
somebody else.
So after I got home, I took Kirsten upstairs to the attic. She
didn’t reproach me. She just blinked understandingly.
Next, I trained myself to despise pink. It became a color as bad
as a curse word. Then, because I heard my mom tell someone that I wasn’t very
athletic, I decided to change that too. I got my brother to teach my how to hit
a softball. I tried to climb trees like my tomboy friends, but when I was ten
feet off the ground, I always froze. Fearful that I was still a girlish
weakling, I jogged in barefoot circles around our local ball field, chasing
after an elusive identity. Perhaps if I were less like a girl and more
like—what? A boy? A proud, muscular, and fiercely independent girl? A boyish
girl? I wasn’t that, but I tried to become that anyway because wise people like
Johnny respected them. I forgot the admiration of my obedient subjects in my
princess days. I didn’t really listen when, as I watered my brother’s
comforter, he told me he was glad I wasn’t a boy. I didn’t really see the Bible
verse that claimed that “God created man in his own image . . . male and female
he created them” (Gen. 1.27, English Standard Version). Instead, I kept running
in circles, building my muscles and endurance so that when I crossed that
finish line at summer camp, the right people would notice me. Johnny wouldn’t
be laughing anymore.
The right people didn’t notice. In fact, nobody noticed. I had
given up my real body and was running as the ghost of someone else. No one was
laughing, but then no one was smiling either.
Then smiling Aunt Pat moved in next door. She was the sort of
feminine figure that feminists despise: quiet, humble, and servant-like. The
more sand she swallowed, the more pearls she spewed. After her grandbaby was
born dead, she got on her knees. After her twenty-one-year-old son died unexpectedly, she
kept smiling at others. And after her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s
Disease, she kept popping out-of-doors to see who else had burdens she could
lift. This lady didn’t pretend to be someone else; she was comfortable in her
own skin. Her quietness didn’t cower; it towered like iron. She did not need to
obtain bigger muscles to fight for her rights because her spirit could lift
more than a heavyweight champion.
As I watched this strange new neighbor, I relaxed. If having the
strength to smile and lift others is what it means to be feminine, well, then I
want to remain a girl. Perhaps playing with dolls is not so much a sign of
domesticity as it is a sign of caring for someone besides oneself.
Eventually,
my spirit found my own skin, and she donned a hot pink sweatshirt without
blushing. Then, later, she mounted the attic stairs and carried a doll down to
her bedroom.
The doll’s blue eyes blinked understandingly.
