Well, no one said anything about the little boy’s little penis and testies; it was, however, subtly implied.
My daughter was next in line.
That morning, she had tried so hard to make herself look pretty for Picture Day – piggy tails, hair clips with neon streaks of fake hair, her new sapphire earrings sparkling, a touch of glittery chapstick. She is a bit artsy-fartsy – a fan of Judy Moody – and she likes playing in front of the mirror and trying on quirky things as much as she likes coloring pictures and scotch-taping them all over my living room walls. That morning, she sneaked into my make-up, just before leaving, and her daddy worked himself into a tizzy trying and trying to wash off – in two minutes – what was successfully marketed as 100% waterproof mascara. He would tell me later (because I had already left for work) that she got on the school bus “lookin’ like a little Ozzy.”
When my daughter stepped in front of that fake Spring backdrop to be photographed, she (most likely) flipped back a crooked pony tail. I can see her doing it because I’ve seen her do it, just as she has seen other girls – including her 17 year old sister – do it a thousand times. Then (she told me) she threw a leg up on that fake rock because she wanted to look “tough” like the boy before her did. She turned to the camera with her best smile.
Her legs are long – as she is one of the tallest in her class – and she’s a fast runner. Her shins and knee caps are all bruised up because she’s never afraid of falling. She was the only girl in the first grade to submit a project to the school's Science Fair. Her project was on additive and reflective colors, and it kicked ass. She mixed paints and dissolved Skittles and separated the pigments in Kool-aid and made three shades of Jell-O. And when her project didn’t win, she cried. She still cries about it sometimes. She has a fifth grade reading level. Okay, I'll stop there. I promise I am making a point (although, I must say, all this pointed bragging is the most fun I’ve had in days!).
The photographer (a tubby, bald male? a twenty-something year old girl?) likely chuckled a minute, then told my daughter to close her legs and place her hands delicately on her thigh.
And she growled. She told me she did. And I was proud.
But, of course, there was a long line of kids – kids who had been repeatedly instructed to follow the rules lest they be sent to “The Solutions Room” for interrogation; kids who find that wimpy principal in mid-life crisis quite frightening; and girls (like mine) who hold their heads high every time they are handed a golden ticket signifying that they have been a Good Citizen, abiding and assisting the flow of elementary school life rather than adding to the rowdiness. My daughter was easily – understandably – coerced her into closing her legs. She was told to hold it all in, hide it all away, as prudently as possible, that her something (indeed) need not catch a breeze, for it might make others uncomfortable. But she didn’t like it, and she saw the unfairness in it, and she didn’t understand it. It taught she and I both something.
I hope she remembers always, even as life coerces her subtlety into roles and expectations, that she has the right to growl and the right NOT to like such coercions, the right to step out of the roles because, more often than not, they are simply stifling.
Here’s what worries me: will we always see the subtleties? They are certainly sneaky. They are the subtleties that sneak up in the mornings, still, to assure me, yes, I had best keep my bag of beloved make-up. Those same subtleties are likely what piled up to coerce me into growing more quiet as the years crept up, as my legs became freakishly long, so long that I would tower over all the boys until eighth grade, ashamed; and again when my booby buds showed up, poor tender nubs as foreign as tumors; and again when one of the high school boys called me a slut for wearing short shorts then stuck his tongue out at me like some kind of lizard. Those same subtleties made me cry as the skin on my upper thighs split to show stretch marks, imperfections that labeled me damaged, not so marketable. They were what kept me from looking at myself, fully, from understanding all that I was, from exploring myself. They were what let me think both the ends and means were rooted in simply finding a lover; a Prince Charming need only be any man who would have me.
Those subtleties may be what keeps my daughter from taking giant steps in the future, and instead keeps her in some safe-box with a close eye on everyone around her. They may be what makes her heart pound as she considers raising her hand in class. They may be what makes her doubt love of self and so love of others. They may be what keeps her from running for president or what keeps her from being a revolutionary poet.
Of course, her pictures still turned out lovely. Her straight back. Her wide smile full of new teeth. Her blackened eyelids in Heavy Metal fashion. And yet, the backdrop behind her is slightly tilted like it might fall over, the whole world of Spring – the sparkling lake, the budding trees – fabulously off-kilter.
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