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Unless you had been living under a rock the past one week, you must have heard about the Canadian couple who have decided to raise their child genderless. They have not revealed the gender of their third child and this news has been making waves all over the internet. While I do not agree with the parents’ choice (which I find too extreme), I can’t help but nod my head when they say there are gender stereotypes.
Even before the baby is born, parents start to buy a few essential things and gender plays a big picture there. For Indians, knowing the gender of the baby is not a choice, so we go with gender neutral colors, but parents in other countries choose colors and toys based on the gender of the baby. They end up choosing pink and pastels for girls and blues and bold colors for boys. I personally know one woman who designed her nursery with a pink theme (she thought she was going to have a girl), but when she realized it was a boy, she sold all of it and bought new things in blue color.
As the baby grows, more choices are made based on the gender. It’s dolls for girls whereas guns for boys. Pink crocs for girls and blue gliders for boys. It gets worse as you grow. Barbie for girls and bey blades for boys.
We can raise our children ‘genderless’ in many ways. Let the boy play with dolls if he likes (mine does) and if the girl does not like wearing lacy frocks, let her be. The sky is not going to fall over if boys wear pink and girls play with guns. As parents, we do have some control over how our child sees the world and let us use that to make it as gender-neutral as possible.
Anamika is a working mother who is constantly trying to conquer the mythical work-life balance. She knits and reads when she manages to find some spare time. She blogs about her experiences with motherhood on her blog, A Slice of Life.
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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