melancholy
laurie_robey and I were at Barnes & Noble when we happened to overhear a young couple shopping for a present for someone. The man of the couple had picked up a "Build Your Own Darth Vader" kit and said, "This is pretty cool." The woman slapped him on the shoulder and said, "Stop it, she's a girl! Put that down." She then dragged him off to some other part of the store.My response was, "Girls can't like Star Wars?" Laurie's was, "Hey, I dressed up as Darth Vader for Halloween when I was a girl!"
Cut to Saturday, when my art student (an amazing girl), wore a very geeky t-shirt of Luke Skywalker standing behind a pack of stormtroopers with the caption "Photobomb." Laurie pointed out what an awesome shirt it was, to which I agreed. My student's mother agreed as well, and said that my student had a friend at school who loved the shirt and wanted to know where to get it. When my student told the girl that it was readily available at Target in the boy's section, her friend looked crestfallen and said, "My mom won't let me shop in the boy's section." And that, apparently, was that.
Seriously. -.- What the fuck.
There's a certain tendency to think of gender oppression as something done by men to women; but that's an incomplete picture at best. When they've bought into it, frankly there's no more rigid gender cop than a suburban mom. :-`
-The Gneech
(Edited to clarify the final point.)
