Of Nail Polish, Kilts, and Glitter Shoes

You may have heard a very girly squee of delight this afternoon. My toddler allowed me to paint her toenails and then indicated that she would like her fingernails painted (I use child-safe, non-toxic nail polish). She then wanted to paint my nails. We did my toes, but as I have an injured finger, we stopped there. She is 16 months old. I know she has seen me paint my toenails on occasion, but never my fingernails. I just don’t do it, except for special occasions, because it lasts approximately .07 seconds. I have no idea where she came up with the idea to want her fingernails painted. She may have realized that I had just trimmed both her finger and toenails, so decided they should both be polished as well. Who knows? Now, I may have painted her toenails, never her fingernails, once or twice last summer for my own amusement *whistles innocently,* but she hasn’t seen the stuff since last June or July. Regardless, she wanted it, and I was VERY excited b/c this was a first for me.  My boys have witnessed me applying polish to my toenails before, and while they were interested in the process, they were never interested in having any on them. I know. I offered. There will be no J Crew catalog kerfuffle for me and my boys, at least not when it comes to nail polish. Anyhow, I was excited to have a child who WANTED nail polish. Squee!! Don’t take my feminist card just yet, though.

Gender identity vs biological sex and how they do and don’t intersect is one of my favorite topics. I’ll probably return to it many times as I write.  I have two sons and a daughter. My daughter is the youngest, and we didn’t know she was a girl until she entered the world. Well, my oldest son did, but that is a story for another day. Nearly as soon as people heard she was a girl, they began asking me if I noticed any differences between her and the boys. I have to say that other than the obvious biological/physical differences that there were no real differences at that age. Her voice was a little squeakier than either of her brothers’ voices had been, but they all sounded like newborns and infants when they were newborns and infants.  Even now, there are very few differences that I would say have to do with her being a girl, although there are some. How many of them are societal cues on which she has already picked up and how many are innate? If I could answer that question, I would be published the world over.

I have to admit to having been slightly annoyed when people would ask if my infant daughter was so very different from her brothers simply because she was a girl. When I had my second son, people didn’t ask me how different he was from his older brother, and, believe me, they are two very distinct little people. Why would any differences have to be attributed to her sex? She is her own little person, and while she is a little girl, she is also the baby of the family with two older siblings who dote on her. I would say her birth order may affect her personality as much as anything else. 

My oldest son wants a kilt because “That’s a skirt that men can wear,” he LOVES picking out dresses for me to wear, and he is obsessed w/ heroes of myth, legend, and pop culture. My younger son wears sparkly shoes because, hello, they are sparkly, and he prefers that his hair be as short as possible. My daughter plays with cars and dolls. She loves shoes. She really, really loves shoes. She will hug them and carry them around. She also likes to wear her brothers’ neckties.  All of these things are outward signifiers of gender in our society, but not one of them actually tells you whether they are comfortable in their own skin.

Without writing a long, gushy post about my children, I can tell you that they certainly seem to be very happy with themselves. That comfort to wear what they want, like what they want, and NOT have those things define who and what they are is something that my husband and I try very hard to provide for our children, so I think I can squee when my daughter likes nail polish, just like I gush when my younger son wears his sparkly shoes, or smile when my oldest son tries to talk me into wearing a ridiculously formal and dressy outfit for running errands. I also enjoy when my children all rough-house together, my youngest plays with trucks, my oldest runs around digging up things and slaying dragons, and my middle guy pulls out his trains. I try not to worry about their gender; I worry about their ability to be themselves.