It's a Strange World That We Live In

Of all the questions in the world, Alexis had to go and ask one of the super hard ones. "Mom, are boys and girls equal?" she asked.

The question was born of a conversation between the neighbor kids. One is a boy Alexis' age and the other a girl a little bit older. They are fantastically awesome kids who I would happily declare as my own, so I know it's a pretty normal conversation for them to debate something like equality between the sexes. Apparently their conversation ended with them agreeing boys and girls are equal. The whole thing stuck with Alexis.

She disagreed.

Per Alexis, girls are better than boys.

And how is that for an awkward sort of moment? I mean, I want to think that boys and girls are equal, but last time I checked, the world didn't seem to completely agree with that. Heck, I ran into this just this morning.

Not equal! Unfortunately!

I gave a sort of non-answer at the time that the conversation first came up. Mostly I did that because it really does depend. It's not so much that boys or girls are better, in my mind it's that each of us has our strengths and weaknesses. Some girls are smarter than some boys and some boys are stronger than some girls and blah, blah, blah.

A day went by and I started to feel bad about my non-answer. It occurred to me that it was a good invitation to a really important conversation. I needed to go ahead and walk through that door. So, I brought the whole thing up again with Alexis. Then I did what I should have done in the first place and asked for her opinion.

She still thought girls are better.

Because they're smarter.

And better at solving problems.

And at math.

And girls dress better.

And they smell better.

They're nicer, too.

So ... I chickened out. I wanted to give Alexis an age appropriate introduction to sexism. I wanted to warn her that the world doesn't work quite the way it should. I wanted to let her know that she will have to work a little bit harder just to get on a level playing field with males.

I wanted to, but I couldn't. I couldn't because I like that world she lives in. I want to live there, too. It's a fantastic place where women earn just as much in the workplace as men. It's a place where women are judged by their awesome and not by how tight their pants are.

It's a really cool place. I'm going to let her live there for another minute or two.

Comments

[Mary]

And who knows, maybe by the time she is in the workforce there will not be such a large gap. It is smaller now than when I was Alexis' age...I was 9 in 1973. There has been progress. Besides, I agree with Alexis, we do smell better.

[Robin]

Harer? :-p
It doesn't help that most men's body washes and such stink either.