Sometimes I am just sitting there, reading a book, thinking “Okay, this is a good book. Maybe I’ll buy it for some people.” When bam, sexism comes along and ruins the day (sometimes it isn’t sexism – sometimes it’s poor writing or a stupid dénouement or suddenly ridiculous characters but the last piece of ruining came from sexism).
Somewhere (the internet?) told me that The Day the Crayons Quit was worth checking out. So I did, from the library. The crayons revolt and write letters of complaint to their owner Duncan. I read it to Tesfa and she enjoyed it and I enjoyed it until we got to the dreaded pink page. And what does this pink page have on it?
It’s because you think I am a GIRLS’ color, isn’t it.
And there you go, book ruined. It went from being a book that I was considering buying for my nephews for Christmas to a book that I am ready to return to the library today so that I never have to see it ever again.
Of my small readership, I know some of you are thinking Wow. Meghan overreacts to really odd stuff, to which I answer, This is not an overreaction. I don’t need to have some freaking children’s book enforcing gender roles for no good reason. Yes, maybe the book is pointing out how idiotic assigning certain colours to certain genders is, or at least trying to, but whenever I read books that are trying to point out subtle societal influences on children, I think:
- Nurture Shock reports that generally books written for kids to enlighten them about societal issues actually backfires for kids under the ages of 7-8, i.e. a book about bullying geared to an audience that young doesn’t prevent them from bullying. Rather it teaches them words and phrases that are useful for bullying. So explicitly labeling a crayon a girls’ crayon, even mockingly, does nothing other than reinforce in a little kid’s mind that there are girl and boy colours.
- What the fucking hell? Why is it okay to have off-handed gender comments? It sure wouldn’t for other marginalized communities. Find me a well-reviewed, contemporary book geared for the kindergarten set with the following sort of comment: It’s because you think fried chicken is food for black people, isn’t it. No Stormfront or KKK books accepted. See. You can’t. They don’t exist because that isn’t appropriate but somehow gender essentialism is? Fuck this shit.
The second point is basically my test for sexism – if you replace whatever the male/female commentary is with some commentary about black people and think to yourself “Damn, that’s some racist shit,” then the initial male/female commentary wasn’t appropriate to have in the first place. This is a test I used frequently with all the misogynistic comments and treatment I got in my undergrad and it works pretty damn well.
So until I return the book to the library, I’ll replace that line with:
Don’t you realise how versatile pink can be?
In any case, fuck The Day the Crayons Quit for raising my hopes only to dash them against the rock of sexism like a toy dinghy in a typhoon.