Everything Is Awesome

I saw a picture of some cool shell toes on Micro.blog the other day, and it brought up a memory of a few years ago.

Girls are awesome

The photo made me remember the time my son (then six) and I were watching PBS Kids and they had a “girls rule” announcement on. My son started to get upset, wondering why he always saw t-shirts and other things that promoted how awesome girls were, but he never saw those kinds of things about boys.

I honestly can’t remember how I responded. How do you explain to a 6-yr.-old that, due to historical mistakes (“Math is hard” t-shirts for girls), there was now more cultural capital in going an inch for girls than a mile for boys? How do you explain that, though there is a clearly documented educational crisis for boys, it’s not of much concern to our culture?

Articles from The Atlantic about boys troubles in schools

It’s not an easy thing to understand, at that age, how the pendulum swings to overcorrect for past inequities and that we must endure current inequities to atone for the past.

Boys may not get the sort of positive affirmation that girls do these days, but the situation doesn’t always seem too dire. When I recollected the incident to my now 10-yr.-old son, he replied with, “I was so stupid back then.”

parenting

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