Today at lunch, J and her little friend M, both 8 years old, were gleefully telling me how they had seen T “dancing and twirling” down the street to school the other day. They showed me how he had pirouetted “like a ballet dancer” and then giggling, remembered how some “big, strong boys” on skateboards who were going by on the other side of the street must have thought that T “looked like a girl”.
Wouldn’t that have been a good thing? I asked them. They stopped laughing and looked at me, confused.
Girls are great, right? I said. They tentatively nodded.
You two are girls. You’re pretty great. Aren’t you? Emphatic agreement.
Isn’t being a girl a good thing? Yes, yes, nodding heads.
So why is it a tease to be called a girl?
Silence.
Then a flurry of discussion.
