Talking to girls

[dancerjodi]

What a great article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bloom/how-to-talk-to-little-gir_b_882510.html?ref=fb&src=sp .

I didn't have a very girly childhood. Mom sewed and was home as a stay at home mom doing the traditional things, but I didn't think of them as "women's work" - they were just things that someone had to do to keep the family going (Dad did those things too when he was home and had time). My sister and I have never been girly girls.

On the one hand I've wished my Mom was more conscious about shopping and body type, because it would have saved a lot of heartache and frustration when shopping for pants as a tween and teen (with these hips there are just some styles that won't work, no matter what the size or how stylish they are). It would have been a bit more smooth to have been taught about differing body types and given some pointers to find clothes that look and feel good (rather than just 'here's some money kid - go in there and find some jeans and I'll wait out here). But I'm glad that there wasn't the overall emphasis on appearances on the whole, because we grew up not focusing on that.

I LOVED books when I was a kid and could have talked about them all night. :) Books and cars and construction equiptment, but I digress . . .

Comments

[celiskywalker.livejournal.com]

That all sounds mighty familiar except that my mother was fairly girly. It wasn't so much that she wasn't girly as she didn't talk about things. You were expected to pick up the girly aspects of life through observation.

I still remember being 10 or 12 and being picked on at school for not shaving my legs, and not knowing how to go about it. I knew my mother did such things, but I was too embarrassed to ask about it because that would involve talking about girly stuff.

It was books and computers for me :-)

[ggirl.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that my mom is a strange mix of uber-girly and also not - she went back to work full time when my bro and I were young, we ended up being latch-key kids all through the school years. Not a terrible thing, both parents working. But as far as style, she wanted me to dress and look girly. I will never forget my mother telling me when I was a teenager "a woman should never leave the house without lipstick on". Things like that stuck with me and shaped my expectations of what a girl should be and look like. Then I went to Smith, and all illusions were shattered! :p