Gender Code

 Pre-reading questions:

1) What happens when people break gender codes?  Do kids naturally know and obey gender codes?  When do they start to be more aware of them?

 

2) This is from a mother’s point of view who wants her son to let his creativity and identity be and flourish without gender code restrictions.  Can boys wear nail polish?  Is it okay for them to wear lots of jewelry?

 

Bedecked

by Victoria Redel

 

Tell me it’s wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy store rings	1
he clusters four jewels to each finger.
He’s bedecked.  I see the other mothers looking at the star choker,
the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock.
Sometimes I help him find sparkle clip-ons when he says sticker earrings	5
look too fake.
Tell me I should teach him it’s wrong to love the glitter that a boy’s only
a boy who’d love a truck with a remote that revs,
battery slamming into corners or Hot Wheels loop-de-looping off tracks
into the tub.	10
Then tell me it’s fine—really—maybe even a good thing—a boy
who’s got some girl to him,
and I’m right for the days he wears a pink shirt on the seesaw in the park.
Tell me what you need to tell me but keep far away from my son who	15
still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means—
this way or that—but for the way facets set off prisms and  prisms spin up
everywhere
and from his own jeweled body he’s cast rainbows—made every shining
true color.	20
Now try to tell me—man or woman—your heart was ever once that brave.

 

Post-Reading Questions

Read again to yourself.  Mark a line that stood out to you either because you liked it or didn’t understand it or for any other reason.

 

Discuss gender expectations. Why can’t this little boy like sparkle?  What is mom doing?  Can males wear nail polish?  Why or why not?  Can girls wear "boy" clothes and participate in "boy activities" more easily?  Why is this a double standard?