#tbt

Been thinking a lot about gender roles even in the context of my own history. My early years I was SUPER girly (I loved Barbies, you had to call me “Flower”, yadda yadda). But by 7 or 8, I began shirking anything feminine. I convinced my mom to get a “boy haircut,” I had a million pairs of soccer shorts, and I loved legos just as much as fart jokes. But I have this memory that sticks out of a woman complimenting my dad on his “two cute boys” (my brother and me) and I was mortified. It’s important to note I never actually had any confusion about my assigned gender, but I started to realize I wasn’t fitting into the “good little girl” mold. Doesn’t help that I hit a growth spurt that put me heads above the rest (literally), a REALLY bad perm (my mom’s effort to stop people thinking I was a boy), started a new school (oh, hello trying-to-fit-in), and just a whole lotta confusion and awkwardness that comes with pre-pubescence. I felt like I was still a girl, but looking back, I just wanted to be myself and I didn’t want anybody to comment or judge how I expressed myself.

I think it’s a lot different growing up now versus the 90s, but what I’ve gleaned is that it’s vital we support gender non-conformity, and that we learn to recognize gender as more of a spectrum than a binary.