Yes, I like omnisexal. Much better.
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“I’ve heard of unisex, but I’ve never had it.”
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Well, the 1980ies was the last time I wore makeup, so I guess I’m okay with this.
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You have to admit that it sounds a lot more like a feature than “may contain copious endocrine disruptors”.
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Unless they’ve changed the formulation for something softer and more spreadable I suspect that interest in using real crayons for the purpose will be limited.
Something like oil pastels I could see being at least usable(if very probably not well formulated for performance on skin under sweating and similar real-world conditions); but with crayons you are rasping a thin layer of hard wax onto the paper. The Crayolas at least have the decency to include pigment in the resulting smear(unlike the mystery brands where you can see a glossy wax layer with only the barest hint of color, those were super frustrating, usually showed up at restaurants where color-on-the-menu/placemats was a kid-friendly offering); but the idea of using one’s skin in place of paper for the rasping operation isn’t a pleasant one.
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Dr. Strangelove migt have ended a lot more happily if only Gen. Ripper had known that he had that option, when he felt that communist attacks had sapped his essence too excessively…
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I am having to talk about this a little with my daughter, who is now 10. For a long time makeup just seemed like part of the evil body image issues forced onto women by our society, but recently I recognized that it can also be a cool format for self-expression. It was a hard concept for me to articulate, but my daughter is smart as a whip and she gets it. Luckily she doesn’t seem like she wants makeup for herself; she’s just curious about it.
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I found that reading Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl really helped me process how to think about make-up, barbies, and other things my early-90s feminist awakening left me feeling negative about. Serano is a trans woman and the book is about being trans, but it’s also about the way we look down on femininity (from the perspective of someone who has had an opportunity to see misogyny from both sides of the fence).
When you are four and you want a Barbie or you are ten and you are curious about makeup, I think you’re trying to figure out one of the many aspects of yourself (that we’ve named “femininity”) through the ways in which you relate to your peers, and the language you do that through is “girly” things.
Anyway, it really made me rethink my attitude towards Barbie. If I show my dislike for Barbie, whether I mean to or not, I may be communicating a dislike for a part of my daughter. If I encourage my daughters to do what they want to do and to explore in the way they want to explore (even if that is through Barbie) then I am showing them that when they wants to explore by rebelling against negative body-image messages, I’ll be there with them in that too.
Of course I’ll never have any idea how it worked out. Not going to run one daughter as a control group. I hope I don’t sound preachy here, I just wanted to share my experience.
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Whipping Girl is pretty widely considered to be required reading for transfeminine folks (which is why I picked it up in the first place), but is an incredibly insightful book on multiple levels. It definitely shows its age in some places as far as terminology goes, but it remains a clear and accessible read.
On my first read-through, I had a couple “Aha!” moments in regards to my personal stuff (particularly navigating transition as a relatively butch individual) as well as with parenting children, including a tomboy girl and a sensitive, somewhat GNC boy.
So yeah, I second your recommendation.
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I had a friend from university who was mailing out copies of it to whoever asked (she likened it to people giving out bibles on street corners). Trans issues are certainly interesting to me, but I think of it as the best parenting book I’ve ever read, and I doubt either of my children are trans (that is, I assume they have the same probability of being trans as anyone else).
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Very well said!
To paraphrase myself from another discussion:
Most reasonably liberal, progressive people think it’s pretty normal for a woman to want to behave or be treated the way a man is, but far fewer people would be comfortable with a man wanting to behave or be treated the way a woman is.
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Your friend is doing good work, then. I wish it weren’t pigeonholed as a “trans book”. And it’s certainly a more valuable parenting book than all the “How to raise boys to be godly men” books that my mom had when I was a kid.
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Thank you!
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Yep. We absolutely do this, all the time.
I wonder how long it will be until we understand that these are all part of consumer culture, and one is no better than the other, that we’re all human underneath.
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I am 110% cisgender and I endorse this message. The gender binary is stupid.
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Nah, shops only carry gender fluid that has been fluoridated, so…
