Girl Piece

Growing up in my house, there has always been generally a clear difference between what a boy should be doing and what habits a girl should have. In a house full of both boys and girls, it was easy to me to associate dolls with girls and trucks with boys. I knew this because I always got dolls and dresses for Christmas before I even asked for them while my brother got Nintendo and transformers. To me, this was all a part of being what I was supposed to be and it never bothered me a bit. However, I think I can say that I have never had a problem with this way of being raised because I was aloud to stray from the original traditions when I wanted to. In the society we live in today, we no longer expect our girls and women to do all the housework, wear dresses everyday, and stay home all day. So our parents teach us early on that we can be more independent. I was not stopped, well not every time at least, from playing wuffle ball in the court or wearing overalls outside to play with the neighbor kids. If I wanted to play with Lego's there was not a problem. And now as a woman, having grown up with an independent mind set, I feel as if I am able to do as I please without feeling guilty. The thing that I did notice, though, was the treatment of the boys. I remember having my cousin over to play when he was only about three or four. He was playing with one of my dolls and both my dad and his dad told him to stop playing with the dolls, like immediately. I remember thinking to myself, "Wow, they must not want me to play with boy toys too", and this was at a very young age. Even when we got a little older, there was a certain point when the boy could not cry anymore without hearing, "Men don't cry like that". When a situation came up where I needed to cry, I received understanding and care before I heard "Ok stop crying, you're not a little girl". I think that in the view of parents, or at least my dad, it was significantly more important to instill masculine roles into the boys as compared to both feminine and independent roles into the girls. Even though it seemed to me growing up that a girl could basically do whatever she wanted in life, I was still given the message, through the lessons of others, that a man is the one in charge. Overall he should be making the decisions, he should be caring for the household someday, and he should be the strong one without too many emotions. To this day, I think I still carry some