"A bit young?"

[ailbhe]

I was in Lush buying secret gifts for my seven-year-old, and chatting to the staff who were helping me choose and pay for the things I got. I said she'd circled every single thing in the catalogue, which they found amusing, and then I said "It's difficult being my daughter, I don't do things like this [indicate mounds of Smelly Pampering Things], but she's experimenting with expressions of femininity."

The woman at the till said "A bit young, isn't she?"

I was amazed. I said something about children playing princesses and Barbie and things, but I was very taken aback. I move in such a bubble that I forget people are unaware of how gender-expression is played out and trained in, I think.

Comments

[ailbhe]

It wasn't hostile, it was just... total lack of understanding. Very odd. The people I usually speak to (self-selecting sample, obviously) think about this stuff as a matter of course.

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

Holly has been feminine since she was about 9 months old & wore a fairy babygro type outfit with wings (put on by me, but not bought by me) to a friend's 2nd birthday party & realised that she received more attention than the birthday girl from the adults (& older children) That still extends to today, as she wore a cerise pink crushed silk party dress to a friend's birthday party last week & received the most admiring comments. I wanted to buy the teal one to compliment her hair colour, but she wanted pink :(

[cabbagemedley.livejournal.com]

Whut? Seven was my prime age for girlifying. Possibly the first and last time I've attempted to use pretty hair clips, and I seem to remember collecting rose petals with my best friend and rotting them in water in the belief that we'd get perfume. All sorts of things like that. Of course seven year olds act out gender! (By secondary school I was over femininity again and wanted to stomp around in jeans, army boots and chunky sweaters.)

[ailbhe]

I think it's just that most people don't think about it, and "experimenting with femininity" sounds vaguely as though it must be sexual.

And of course seven-year-olds don't have sexuality.

[cabbagemedley.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, of course they don't.

(That brings back a memory - I think I was 8 years old and on my second girl-crush before I asked my mum what a lesbian was, and she got annoyed that someone had called me one over Perfectly Innocent Behaviour.)

[songster.livejournal.com]

I'd say rather that "experimenting with X" sounds more deliberate and planned than you'd expect of an average seven-year-old. "Experimenting" to me implies conscious, self-aware considerations such as "well, I'll try this and see if I like it" or perhaps "I'll try this and see what Mum/Dad's reaction is". Are those factors consciously at play with Linnea yet, or is it more reactive in terms of what she sees around her in her peer group. Or does she just happen to prefer girly stuff at the moment for no obvious reason?

In either of the latter cases, the more usual phrase used about younger kids would be "he/she's going through an X phase". It has the same meaning of trying things out, but not in as consciously directed a manner.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

I must say this sounds right to me; obviously you were there and have all the non-verbal contextual information, for example about whether there was an undercurrent of disapproval of Linnea's presumed precocious sexuality... But personally I would not use for "experimenting" for a 7 yo either, even though on a rational level of *course* that's what she's doing.

[ailbhe]

No disapproval, just complete surprise, and then a sort of "oh gosh yes" moment. The person clearly hadn't given the matter any thought before, in spite of once having been a small girl herself.

[ailbhe]

Heh, it's nothing to do with her real-life peer-group, certainly! Well, it might be, in that she might be reacting against them. But what she *says* is that she wants to practise girly things and tomboy things now so that she can decide what kind of teenager she wants to be.

[songster.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty unusual level of self-awareness, yes. Good for her!

[ailbhe]

It was weirder at three. Number two daughter isn't quite as alarming.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the cashier's idea of expressions of femininity involves tops with "future WAG" written on them and vertiginous high heels and dancing like Rihanna.

[songster.livejournal.com]

Or, conversely, their idea of femininity doesn't involve smellies from Lush. Maybe they see Lush luxury gloop as unisex, or maybe they see it as "girly" rather than feminine.

There's a bazillion different coulda/shoulda/woulda interpretations, many of which don't rely on unsavory assumptions by the cashier.

[ailbhe]

Tsk, you've been in Primark again. Don't do that. The cashier was *fine*. Just never thought about it before.