Ok Seriously

One more post on the Target gender-desegregation hoopla. Because I'm really frustrated and kind of horrified at the things people are saying.* I read this post by Matt Walsh because some of my Facebook friends 'like' his page (although I did decide to hide all posts from him in future because I need to live my life not constantly frustrated about this.) Anyways.

I have two sons who are into a broad variety of things, including dolls, construction vehicles, dance parties, and reading. I don't have a daughter, so I can't speak to what she would be like, although I remember being a little girl who loved biology (National Geographic wildlife specials all the way), fat novels, playing in the woods, and riding bikes and playing Red Rover with the neighbourhood kids. Chances are you have a similar story. You loved Barbies, climbing trees, and those foam 3D puzzles of architecture. You loved the Hardy Boys, card games, and a stuffed frog you took to bed with you every night even when you were way too old for it. None of these things was cause for much comment. Now, I'm not saying there were no problems with the expectations on kids in the past, of course, but the truth is that the toy aisle has gotten more gender-segregated in the last few decades. 

The thing is this: toy gender segregation is not about biblical manhood and womanhood. It's about money. Toymakers, broadly, don't give a plugged nickel whether their toys encourage girls to be nice, pretty, and domestic, and boys to be tough, athletic, and spatial.** They do, again broadly, care about their bottom line. If you can get siblings to play with different toys, because one of the siblings is a boy and two are girls, you've just sold that many more toys. If boys and girls can't play together in groups because boys and girls don't play the same group games, you've sold that many more toys. If, however, kids can happily play group games, pretend games, building toys, et al. in non-gender-specific ways, toymakers don't get to divide their markets into smaller, more lucrative categories. 

Why get into a righteous froth on behalf of toymakers' moneymaking categories? I talked a bit in my last post about how most of the toy segregations don't make sense and are actually discouraging the kinds of things we want to see in godly men and women. Let's go over it one more time. If your little girl plays with dinosaurs, wonderful-- she's cultivating a sense of joy and wonder in God's creation. If your little boy plays dolls, wonderful-- he's practicing to be the kind of father who's there, one-on-one with his kids, teaching them the truth as they stand and sit and walk. If your daughter loves hockey, perfect-- she's set on a path for enjoying the physical form she's been given, stewarding her body and health well, and learning to cooperate with others. If your son is dazzled by ballet, perfect-- he's getting set to grow into a man who appreciates the beauty and creativity of art and enjoys God's gift of music and dance as ways to praise him and communicate with each other. None of these things conflict in any way with Biblical categories of manhood and womanhood expressed within marriages and churches. None of these things have the slightest thing to do with sexual orientation or transgenderism. It's a crying shame to see people-- parents, even!-- acting as if it's somehow bad to let kids freely roam the toy aisles without a big sign insisting that what they like is for the other gender. It is also startlingly illogical. Surely letting kids like what they like is doing the precise opposite of encouraging gender confusion, by telling our little girls and boys that there are many ways to be a girl and many ways to be a boy, and in all that beautiful diversity, there is no need for one to long to be something other than what she is, something other than what he is: a unique person who loves, say, science experiments, Lego Star Wars, and paper doll kits, and is just right exactly the way they are.

*People are using words like 'sissifying' and 'pussifying' to describe this move, because A) this has anything to do with anybody being tough? and B) thanks for showing clearly with your word choice that yes, people do still think that female=weak and useless, so we DO need to break down these gender stereotypes; sorry Matt Walsh, when you say "Nobody ever said that girls can’t be strong or boys can’t be gentle" your own crowd is right there giving you the lie...) 

**Which, BTW, not Biblical criteria at all. That's just culture and tradition talking.

A Quick Crash Course...

...in why I write about gender stereotyping and feminism.

When Target makes a decision that allows kids to enjoy whatever toys they are drawn to without feeling as though they are making the 'wrong' choice, and a big crowd of people hop onto their Facebook page to tell them they are denying our God-ordained genders, kowtowing to the 'transbullies', and leading America further into the 'depraved' dark hole it's already in. GUYS. God didn't give Adam and Eve each a pile of approved toys. Kids are also not born with any particular proclivity to cars/blocks/actions figures vs. kitchen sets/baby dolls/pink dress up. None of these things are sexual. None of these things are inherently gendered. None of these things are treated in the Bible's discussion of gender, which instead focuses on things like honour, servant-heartedness, and love. Those are things I can do and be while moving heavy rocks to build a wall for my garden-- so why not a little girl playing with construction toys? Those are things my husband can do and be while cuddling our little boy before bedtime and singing him a lullaby-- so why not a little boy playing with a doll? These were things Jesus exemplified while heading up a bread and fish meal for a big crowd-- so why not a little boy playing kitchen?

What I'm getting at is, when you're upset about the breakdown of gender divides that do not exist in any way, shape, or form in the Bible, and invoking God to do it, you're doing it wrong. You're gypping a bunch of kids in the process. It hurts nobody to let kids like what they like without judgement. It will help kids, to feel free to explore and learn with a broader range of toys and games. It will help kids by letting them feel more confident in their choices and preferences. Putting extra-Biblical rules and restraints on little children is exactly the sort of thing the Bible frowns very strongly on. Unlike letting your daughter play with Avengers action figures and your son wear fairy wings, on which subject the Bible is utterly silent.

(Or maybe I just read the headline wrong, and Target actually replaced its whole toy section with a squad of evil child-corruptors handing out sexual literature? No? Then let me close with this handy flowchart:)

Culture Check: The Top-Selling Girl's Dolls

This image is sourced from Pigtail Pals Ballcap Buddies' blog, where a community member submitted this collage of the top-selling dolls in toy stores right now. Are these "just" dolls, or do they send a loud and clear message to our daughters (and sons!) about the "right" way to be a girl?

One of the reasons I wanted to share this is because there is a certain amount of fear about blurring gender lines in the evangelical, complementarian community. This is certainly a concern; God created two genders and declared two genders very good, and I think it is right to celebrate and defend that. But I think it is equally harmful the way the majority of our culture (as seen in the bulk of mainstream media and merchandise) seems to be pushing the lines further apart in ways that alienate and harm male-female relationships, and limit both men and women, boys and girls. You can bet that the top-selling boys' action figures have nothing in common in terms of interests, physique, or attire with any of these girls' dolls.

Yes, God created us different, but God also created us for fellowship and with many, many similarities. Men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus; we are all image-bearers of God, joint heirs of the same salvation, and intended to live together with fellowship and respect, not mutual incomprehension. (And we both have a great deal more variety within our respective genders than these dolls would have us believe!)

10 Reasons I Stopped Wearing Make-Up

I want to talk today about make-up. Or rather, the lack thereof. And before I do that, I want to make a quick disclaimer: the purpose of this post is to encourage and provoke, not to judge. I feel myself very blessed to have a God who inspires a deep confidence that isn't rooted in other people's opinions of me, and a husband who affirms and celebrates my natural beauty without any makeup at all, but I know that given the prevailing cultural pressures, every woman will be on a different point in their journey. So I want to start by saying, I'm not judging anyone for wearing make-up. I think life in general is much better without it, and I want to share why, but if your choice is to continue, understand that this is not intended as a criticism of you.

So, that said, the story of how I stopped wearing make-up, and then 10 reasons why I think it's a great idea.

As a teenager, I was deeply insecure, wracked with guilt and condemnation about my sin inside, and convinced that externally I was plain and needed make-up to fix feature flaws-- my too-straight eyebrows, my crooked mouth, my eyes with the funny outside slant, my stubby eyelashes, my high forehead and long face. God was very kind to bring me out of my forest of condemnation and into a joyful freedom in Christ when I was around 18 or 19, but the journey of physical confidence was just starting. 

I often said I wore make-up because it was fun: colourful, experimental, interesting. There was a degree to which this was true (I liked cat-eye liner, bright lip colours, and bold eyebrows) but there was a much stronger degree to which I still believed in that list of "feature flaws" above. 

The year I turned 20, Steven and I began our relationship. Steven has been an amazing help to me in overcoming my physical insecurity; from the first he has called me the most beautiful woman in the world, never criticized my appearance, and has complimented the very things I considered flaws. I was so nervous for our honeymoon because he would see me with my hair down for the first time and I didn't like how it looked down, and wondered whether I should wash my make-up off in the evenings!

His acceptance and love of my appearance couldn't help but work it's magic on me, though. I remember vividly one morning midway through our first year of marriage when he was once again complimenting me, first thing in the morning before I'd fixed my hair or put on make-up.
"Do you really think I'm this beautiful with no make-up on?" I asked.
"Your eyes are brighter," he told me.
Well, if that was true, I didn't see the point anymore.

It took me a while to get accustomed to my face without the additions I'd given it, but over time I learned to love my straight eyebrows (I think they make me look intellectual) and care more about my smile and it's one-sided dimple than whether my mouth is perfectly symmetrical. These days, I occasionally wear make-up to formal events like weddings as a way of signalling that they're special, but I barely put any on; I usually feel like it makes my features look dark and unnatural.

I'm now about two years out from wearing make-up on a daily basis, and here are 10 reasons why I think it is a great decision for any woman to make:

1. You are free to cry, swim, or sweat without warning or consequence. Make-up subtly limits the activities you can participate in. How many times have you felt moved by something in church but been distracted from the deep significance of what you're feeling by the need to hold back the tears so they don't smear your mascara? How many times have you decided not to go swimming or play a sport (things that men participate in without a second thought) because it will ruin your make-up? Heck, you can't even drink normally as a make-up-wearing girl because your lipstick might smear on the cup. Losing the make-up frees you up to be more involved in actually doing things, instead of focusing your energy on just looking right. 
2. It saves you money. I always had a fairly small make-up kit: mascara, tinted lip balm/blush, an eyeshadow palette or two, brow shader, and eyeliner. At a frugal estimate this was about a $35 kit. (At this point in my life, I'm much more concerned about the quality and ingredients of my toiletries than I was as a teenager, so if I was still wearing make-up today it would probably be more.) Given shelf-life and rate of using up, that $35 kit was probably $100 yearly. If I started wearing make-up at 13 and kept it up until I was 65 (although in all likelihood if I went on that long, I'd probably keep going 'til I died) that would be over five grand spent on hiding my face. And that's a small, frugal kit! Aren't there better, more fulfilling ways to spend $5,000?
3. It saves you time. I'll soon be a mother of two. I'll be nursing (probably both of them), getting two babies dressed, and making breakfast for us all in time for Steven to come home from work for 9:30 coffee break. I work a part-time job, am redecorating my house, and pre-homeschooling a bright, curious little boy. In short, there are a thousand practical things that I am responsible for. Beyond that, there are many other meaningful things that do more for my soul than putting on make-up: reading my Bible, praying, reading good books, spending time with people, creative pursuits, and building my relationship with my husband and child. I gladly take the extra 20-30 minutes of time that come from not putting on and taking off make-up on either end of my day. And I believe that reading the Word or loving people actually do more for my beauty than mascara and blush. 
4. It's better for the environment. There are a host of problems with the ingredients used in conventional make-up products, from animal testing to questionable origins, but even if you're using organic, "earth-friendly" make-up products, you're still facing a colossal amount of packaging waste, manufacturing waste (power usage, by-products), and transportation costs (emissions, fuel use). When adding up the cumulative effect of this from the millions and millions of women using make-up worldwide, shouldn't we be asking ourselves if this is really good stewardship of the resources God put on our planet? Especially given that it isn't substantially improving human lives or allowing us to be better in serving the church or sharing the Gospel.
5. It's better for your health. If you've hung around me for any length of time you've probably heard me rant about the nasty ingredients in beauty products: alcohols, artificial fragrances, chemicals preservatives and dyes, many of which are known or suspected to be involved in causing cancer, reproductive difficulties, and more. Not to mention how a healthier planet (see #4) results in healthier humans. I mentioned this in a previous blog post about how the things that are considered feminine and beautiful are often harmful to our health, which I think is a good indicator of how warped our perception of beauty has become. 
6. It breaks a vicious circle. This is sort of related to the last point-- those nasty chemical ingredients in the beauty products that are supposed to give you flawless skin, miles-long lashes, a blooming complexion, erase your wrinkles, etc. are self-perpetuating a cycle of oil-overproduction and skin-drying for your skin, degrading and damaging your eyelashes, dulling your skin's natural bloom, and contributing to the aging of your skin. So that you'll need to buy more make-up to cover up the ill effects, so that your skin will be even worse off, so that you'll need to buy even more... Almost like make-up manufacturers don't particularly want you to be naturally beautiful isn't it? Like maybe they care more about profits than about you actually having any of those buzzwords they use in their commercials: "fresh", "natural", "breathing", "real you..." The other side of this is that the more accustomed you become to your face in an augmented/artificial mask-- the arch of your brows carefully achieved by plucking and pencils instead of your natural straight line, your thin upper lip plumped up with a lipstick, your undramatic lashes darkened-- the harder it is for your to enjoy or even recognise your own face without make-up; you start to feel as if the face you were born with isn't really who you are.
7. It takes a stand against the world's lie that age is to be fought and feared. The world, faced with at best nothing and at worst, judgement, in the afterlife, has a good reason to fear the effects of age, as they bring death ever-closer. But we have something else to look forward to: eternal joy, worship, and peace in a world made perfect by Christ. We have a Scripture that tells us grey hair is a crown of glory. The lie about age is particularly pernicious in it's condemnation of female aging, and I have heard this explained as a simple matter of biology: men like women who look young because men like women who look fertile. Never mind that female fertility is generally decent until around 40; we as Christians need to assess the deeply humanistic assumptions of this idea.
   
   Scripture teaches that the point of marriage is a lifelong commitment mirroring that of Christ and his Bride, the Church. Humanistic viewpoints often debate whether men are "meant" to be monogamous, assume the sole point of life is to pass on genes, and address attraction and parenthood from a purely naturalistic perspective. Not so the believer! We know monogamy is God's intention for human relationships and thus the happiest, most fulfilling path for both men and women. We know that healthy biological children are a great blessing from the Lord, but that they are not the be-all-and-end-all of a happy relationship or a happy life. We know that there is more to attraction than genetic influences because we are called to lifelong love and attraction where our mate's character and our own self-sacrifice are as important as genetic factors. Believing this, why do we buy into the idea that the highest compliment we can pay an older woman is that she "looks young"?* 
8.  It declares the "very-good"ness of God's creation. I want to tread carefully here because I know the effects of sin have brought deformity, illness, and injury into the world so that there are real ways in which one's face might no longer be "very good" as it was created. But at the same time, I don't believe God intend to create a world without genetic variation. I think that if there were no Fall, there would still be women with big noses and small ones, high foreheads and long torsos and cowlicks and widow's peaks, with crazy afros and downy-fine locks, with wide hips, flat chests, sturdy ankles, and narrow shoulders. I certainly don't believe we'd all be slight variations on the modern Western ideal woman: white, long flowing locks, slender figures with curves in the "right" places, doe-eyes, and perfectly regular facial features. My straight eyebrows, my high forehead, my "funny" eyes, are all part of the Avery that God lovingly knit together when I was in my mother's womb. My childbearing hips and my Laura-Ingalls-esque "strong as a little French horse" constitution are part of my heritage, traits I can see in my grandmothers and great-grandmothers. I will never be the "ideal" presented in movies, but I am just as God intended me to be, and I believe that is a far more beautiful thing.
9. It fights the false image of femininity sold to the men in your life. Sometime after I stopped shaving my legs, I came across an article about how, in a society where hard- and soft-core pornography is more and more readily provided for young boys, many young teenaged girls already feel pressured to get full Brazilian waxes-- boys from a very young age are squeamish about or unattracted by female body hair. Setting aside the numerous other issues we could explore in this story, isn't it scary that from such a young age, boys are indoctrinated to believe that a woman's body should look perpetually prepubescent? Make-up plays the same game, if more subtly; pouty lips and long, fluttering lashes help make a woman look perpetually physically attracted/seductive. Ditto blush. Arched brows suggest mystery. None of these are the things that make a woman a good Christian, a good woman, or a good life partner. Mystery? Honesty and encouragement in the faith are far more important. Seduction? It's all well and good in a one-flesh union, but it's not the part of a godly woman to be seducing the males willy-nilly. But if the media's image is the only one ever presented and it's always presented in a deeply attractive light, it's hard for male brains to ignore. If they should be seeing something different, surely they should be seeing it in the church?
10. It fights the negative body messages constantly sent to the women in your life. The number of genuinely hideous-looking people in the world is pretty low. But there are women all around you who see themselves as less acceptable because of the messages of media. Women who think they are too stocky, too pale, too curvy, too fat, too skinny to be attractive. Women who think they aren't glamourous enough or charming enough or that they lack the "feminine mystique" to be valued and loved. And every time you criticize yourself they-- your sisters, your friends, your daughters-- face the temptation to compare themselves to you and measure up even shorter. You moan about how you need to lose five extra pounds? The girl beside you carrying twenty-five extra pounds has a new reason for self-loathing. You mention how you hate your hair? The girl beside you who has always wished her hair was as nice as yours now has reason to suspect you think her hair is ugly beyond all belief. You use make-up to "fix" how your eyes look "too close together"? Now your daughter with the exact same eyes has reason to believe her mother thinks her eyes are a feature flaw and she'd better find a way to fix hers as well. The world needs women who will proudly declare that not only are there many things vastly more to be valued than physical beauty-- from kindness to humour to persistence to wisdom-- but that women as God created us are beautiful anyways-- we don't need to fritter away our time and energy and money to "fix" ourselves. 

*I remember one time in a prayer meeting we divided up by age: youths, 20-40 years olds, and over-40s. Our pastor joked that the over-40 women need not declare their age. I don't blame him for this lighthearted and probably realistic jest, but how I wish that women over 40 in the church were cheerfully sharing their age and showing their grey hairs and wrinkles to the younger women as a proud declaration that age is not something to fear but a blessing from God and a status of honour and wisdom as the Bible teaches!

Canting-- What's That?

So I went pretty full-on theological last night so I thought I'd switch things up a little bit tonight and talk more pop-culture. I don't know if people caught my mention of "canting" in my review of Now You See Me. It's not a very common word, and to be honest, even the Internet doesn't have much to say about it, but it's an extremely, scarily common happenstance.

So what is canting? Well, the dictionary tells us, "1. Angular deviation from a vertical or horizontal plane or surface; an inclination or slope." In terms of female body language, The Achilles Effect describes it as one of "the many ways that female bodies, when displayed in popular culture, are sexualized and positioned to communicate submissiveness and powerlessness. Showing females in a recumbent position is one way of communicating this message and canting is another... the crossed leg position, standing on one leg, the torso twisted away from the vertical, and the head cant. All of these positions serve to place the female character off balance and give her an air of vulnerability."

So that's the wordy definition, but a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are a few:

 

Getting the idea? In children's media-- and comic books for adults*-- the canting is very obvious, to an almost grotesque degree, and it is quite common for it to be dismissed on the grounds of them being cartoons, exaggerating the characteristics of the characters because that's what cartoons do. In the adult movie posters it can be more subtle, as in the Italian Job, just a little bit of chest-thrust, with head down and a leg stuck off to one side, or it can be quite obvious, as in the Pirates poster, with Kiera Knightly's tilted head and seductive glance and her hand pointing right at her chest.** These postures are in stark contrast to the sort of poses men hold; consider the Gatsby poster where all the male characters have their shoulders squared directly to the camera (as do the male leads Jack, Will, and Charlie in the other two posters). 

 It becomes a bit of a chicken-or-egg debate, whether the movies are just reflecting that women do subtly stand this way because of their generally-larger hips and different center of balance and what have you, or whether women learn to stand like this because it's presented in media. If you think it's the former, do a little experiment (if you're a lady). Check out that Disney poster up at the top, and try on all those poses. Then ask yourself-- is it really natural for me to stand like this? Ask yourself a few more questions-- if I were standing like this in a public place, would I feel awkward because of what my body language was communicating to the men around me? Try this one: if I had a 15-16 year old daughter (the average age of Disney princesses), how would I feel if she was standing like this in a public place? 

I'm just going to go ahead and take my stance on the chicken-or-egg debate-- women stand like this as a learned behaviour, not as a reflection of some kind of innate knowledge that this is the most feminine way to stand. Since I've agreed pictures are worth a thousand words, here's another in favour of that argument:

When did we go from this kind of thing to what we see in the movie posters above? Someone else can trace that lineage. What I'm concerned about is why this ubiquitous canting pose matters. I propose a couple of reasons:

1) Posture! When we stand with our feet totally together, or toes turned inward, or when we always rest our weight on one hip, or have one shoulder off-balance, or our head tilted, or our torso curved or twisted (all fairly common for women; try comparing male and female postures the next time you're in a crowd), we're trading off future, and even current, comfort and health in order to fit into a media-driven, sexually-charged standard of beauty (sort of like what we do with high-heeled shoes, or chemical-heavy make-up). This happens pretty subconsciouly, because much like figures of speech, we pick up "appropriate" body language and position from our culture without too much conscious decision-making going on. Which is kind of unfair to us in this instance, but that's why there needs to be people pointing it out.

Also, and more importantly...

2) Value. When we fall into line with a canting posture, we are nonverablly communicating a false idea about men and women-- taking the Biblical warrant to submit to our husbands far beyond the realm of marriage and adopting a submissive posture before all men. This is not Scripturally-mandated, and it is not Scripturally-lauded. When I think of the daughters of Zelophehad fighting for their right to keep the family inheritance in Joshua, Ruth proposing to Boaz so she could fulfill the Scripture mandate to maintain a family name, Tamar risking her life and reputation to do the same, Esther steeling herself to face the king and die for her people if need be, Deborah stepping up where the male leadership of Israel was doubtful and did not trust the Lord, Rahab hiding spies because she could see where the Lord's favour lay, the Proverbs 31 woman making investments and working with strength and diligence, Anna with her decades of unwavering faith, Mary standing up straight before the prospect of ridicule, shame, divorce-- everything in her life crashing down around her-- and saying "I am the Lord's handmaiden"... when I think of these women that the Scriptures honour and commemorate, I don't think about their soft, yielding dispositions to the world around them. They are women of courage, of rock-solid faith in the promise of God, bold to risk ridicule or death for the sake of that promise, even if the leadership-- the government of Jericho, Barak the judge, the partriarch Judah-- did not believe or value that promise. I don't doubt that women like Mary, Anna, and Ruth were submissive to their husbands as the Scripture requires. But without being aggressive or unwomanly in the least, the woman I listed above do display what John Piper calls "massive steel in their backs and theology in their brains".

Of course, it's as plain as the nose on your face that God did provide two different (general) body shapes to men and women (with lots of variations within that general theme for both genders). It is not plain to me at all the He wants women to damage their bodies and accentuate their sexuality for the sake of seeming submissive or nonconfrontational towards a wider mankind to whom they owe no such allegiance.

So, in closing, one more image, a turnaround by Kevin Bolk of a poster for The Avengers that puts the one female character in a front-facing, nonsexual pose instead of vice-versa. It's actually incredibly awkward and embarrassing to look at-- which is exactly how the original poster would look if we weren't so desensitized to the sexualisation of women by the sheer magnitude of the imagery that does it. Think about that.

And, hey, I warned you when I started out that these were going to be incredibly verbose blog posts. At least there's lots of pictures here.

 *If you have any doubts about that, check out the Hawkeye Initiative, which sheds stark light on just how far comic book creators will go in twisting the female body to make it "sexy".
 **It actually comes a lot more obvious, particularly in low-brow comedies or romance movies, but I'm sparing you that.

Culture Check: Then and Now

The image above was tweeted by the group Let Toys Be Toys, which lobbies retailers to stop seling toys by gender and instead sell them by category. On the left, it shows items from the retailer Argo's 1970's catalog of toys; on the right, current equivalents from their website.

Aside from the obviously much poorer construction, design and materials used, what immediately strikes is the barrage of pink. It is unrealistic (do you know anybody with a pink house?) but, more troublingly, it fosters what I consider an extremely negative and unbiblical gender stereotype.

See, it totally excludes little boys from two fundamental parts of life: having and caring for a house, and having and caring for a child. By drenching all the household items and childcare toys in pink, which in our society is strongly coded "female", it is telling little boys that this isn't for them.

Believe me, this is not innate. My one-year-old loves balls and tools and cars, and I have had people say to me many times something along the lines of "He's a real little boy, isn't he?" because of this. And yes, absolutely he is. A real little boy who runs to get his little broom when Mummy's sweeping and his little vacuum cleaner when Mummy's vacuuming. A real little boy who loves feeding his Ernie doll tea and snacks, or rocking the weird little androgynous baby doll his great-grandma gave him and "singing" to it (think tuneless "la, la, la" noises). A real little boy who is just as fascinated by a bunny as by a motorcycle, who loves reading as much as running around outside, in short, who is fascinated and attracted everything in his world, not just the things that are typically considered "boy things".

And I want it to stay that way. I wish I could protect him from finding out as he got older that pink toy kitchens are where the girls play, from his little boy friends telling him something he likes and is interested in is "girly". Because if I could protect him from that, maybe I could protect him from the larger implications of it as he got older. From well-meaning adults asking him how many girlfriends he has as if it is somehow manly to be two-timing a woman. From the beer commercials portraying a man with a bevy of pretty girls around him as the kind of guy my son should want to be like. From the jokes in movies about girls desperately pushing for commitment while guys are just looking to "play the field" and have fun. Basically, from the larger cultural message that tells boys that they don't want commitment and family leadership and responsibilities-- they want meaningless sex with as many girls as possible, and to not get "caught" by any of them.

How does this little pink buggy play into that? It subtly, insidiously starts teaching boys that home life, parenthood, domestic bliss- those are "girly". Little kids don't have the insight to look at a commercial or advertisement for a toy directed at them and to see the way the marketer has figured out what makes them tick to push them towards a certain product. They don't know that toy marketers use a "divide and conquer" strategy: if you can convince little boys and little girls that they shouldn't like the same kinds of toys, you can sell twice as many toys. They don't know that the world and the devil want them to be anything but committed, engaged husbands and fathers. But they do feel the peer pressure and their instinct to be accepted by their gender telling them to stay away from the "wrong" toys. Oh, how I wish I could protect my son from that!

Instead, son, I pray you grow up to be like your Daddy. He is a tender and caring father and a wise and responsible caretaker of his home, and those are two ways that he shows the kind of manliness the Bible praises and that points to God: not swagger and infidelity and carelessness, but deep commitment to His bride and tender and compassionate Fatherhood.