Wednesday, November 22, 2006

I didn't just fall off the liberal potato wagon, you know...

Today I took a moment out of my lunch break to do a little Christmas surfing. My mom had mentioned that she was thinking about getting Sam a Cabbage Patch newborn for Christmas. Because I am a liberal-wacko, I am okay with this. Actually, I loved the idea. I have no qualms whatsoever about letting my little boy play with dolls. In fact, I like the idea of raising him to be loving and nurturing.

But here’s the hitch: no matter where either of us looked, all we could find was girl dolls and we were hoping to find him a little boy doll to play with. So I thought to myself that I would go straight to the source to see where I could find him a little boy doll: the Cabbage Patch Kids website. And what I found there was very disturbing in a pod-people-sci-fi kind of way. There are no boy newborns, only boy older kids! Where do the older boys come from, if not hatched in the cabbage patch like the rest of them? Oh the possibilities!

And it’s no wonder this country has issues with accurate sex education classes! This is way confusing! Girls are born as babies and grow, and boys just mysteriously appear. (Warning: sarcasm my be closer than it appears.) Perhaps this is a cleverly designed ploy of the ever-powerful male hegemony to reinforce the notion that pee does, in fact, just mysteriously appear on the toilet seat, dirty clothes do just appear on the floor and dishes do just appear in the sink. I know, I know! Boys come from the Mess Fairy, same as those other things, right?

On a more serious note, though, I am very disappointed. I had really attached myself to the idea of him having one. I suppose we could get him a different boy doll, but let’s face it, there’s just something different, something superior about Cabbage Patch Kids. Other dolls never quite measure up. Maybe he can just have a girl doll. I truly don’t know why gender is such a big issue. I guess it shouldn’t be.

Also, this reminds me of a little boy Owen used to work with at the preschool. I can’t remember his name, but he was very into cleaning and ironing in the housekeeping corner. All the other kids would be gathering for circle time and this little boy would be dust-bustering the rug or something. One day he tried to iron the wrinkles out of Mr. Owen’s forehead. While Mr. Owen didn’t mind, I daresay he has a ways to go before his ironing skills are on par with Martha.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is my thought on how to remedy the situation. We all know that the beauty of the CPK line of babies is they are all exactly the same. CPK are the epoitme of gender equality. The only difference between the boys and girls is the color of their outfits and the color of the adoption paper envelope. SO, buy a CPK with a neutral color (such as green or purple) and start refering to the baby by a name such as:
Earl Magnus Heinschtetter-Schmergenburg III of Lestchenburg.

and POOF - you have a boy newborn