When I was 2 years old, my father started building a big house behind our tiny starter house. 

For days leading up to the arrival of the giant trucks and backhoes coming to dig out the foundation, my mother tried to get me excited. 

"Don't you want to watch the big trucks?!" she'd tease. 

When they finally arrived, the neighborhood boys parked themselves on our property, transfixed. 

I glanced out the window and immediately turned back to my toys, ignoring the commotion. As my mother recalls, "It was really a wake-up for me."

This now-infamous family anecdote (story from real incident) wasn't the first time my parents tried to shake off gender stereotypes. 

As a toddler, they dressed me in overalls and cut my hair in an androgynous bowl cut. I didn't have Barbies; I had wooden blocks. Even my first name is evidence of their experiment in gender neutrality. You can't imagine how many times I've had to explain, "No, not Jessica, just Jesse. Like a boy 

We all thought that the differences had to do with how you were brought up in a sexist culture, and if you gave children the same chances, it would equalize," my mom says. "It took a while to think, 'Maybe men and women really are different from each other, and they're both equally valuable.' "


Since then, of course, countless studies have shown that men and women think and behave differently—to the point that it's not the existence of these differences, but the source of them, that is the subject of any debate. By the time my generation came of age, women could call themselves feminists and also embrace the standard trappings of femininity. We could wear pink, spend money on fancy shoes, and simultaneously expect—no, demand—the same success as men. Femininity and feminism were no longer a contradiction.(conflicts )