Asking for an end to gender specific marketing doesn’t equal asking for gender neutrality. Asking for trucks to be called trucks, not boys’ toys, or for all colors to be open to everyone, is just asking for fairness. When I became pregnant in my late 30s and began to visit stores aimed at new parents, I […]
If we are not doing these things—working every single day to take down the system that allows this kind of racist violence to occur—then we are not only complicit in the violence, but we are part of the violence. Last summer, I bought my white daughter a black doll. As I watched the news unfold […]
Being a geek parent means hiding my dancing Groot in my bedroom so the kids don’t run out the battery. “I’m Wonder Woman,” announced my daughter. “OK,” I said. My daughter, who is 5, is many things. Sometimes a fairy princess. Sometimes a doctor. Sometimes both; I once walked in on her, fully attired in tutu and sparkly […]
A white, thin, blonde-haired doll is hardly groundbreaking. I want to like GoldieBlox, the relatively new toy company for girls, whose goal is “to get girls building” and “to help level the playing field in every sense of the phrase.” I really do, but their advertising keeps giving me mixed messages. Even as the mother of […]
Whether she identifies as a boy or a girl hardly matters, as long as she never feels trapped in a place or a persona that no longer fits. Today my daughter is wearing blue camouflage shorts, a white collared shirt and a necktie with thick blue stripes. It’s the beginning of third grade and this […]
