Playgrounds and Potty Talk

My friend Lillie laughed as I stumbled over the twisted, dark, and tangled tree roots trying to keep up with the rest of my friends. Laughing in high pitch squeals of 8 year old glee, we sprinted over the wooden boat behind our school. The boys and girls shouted and screamed as the wild and chaotic game of tag consumed the playground. Out of breath we stumbled over each other, rolling in and out of the corners of our hide out. This game of tag consumed every hour of freedom we had outside the brick walls of our elementary school. The teachers stood around the mulch smiling at us and praying no one would fall. Lillie and I raced by them, running from our friends on the opposite team. My friend max flew out of no where tackling me and Lillie to the ground and shouting, "You loose!" Lillie turns to him, a laughing smile on her face and shouts back in her high little eight year old voice, "Max you smell like shit!" Of course everyone with in distance began laughing hysterically even max. He had a mischievous smile on his face and began shouting inappropriate words back at us, leaving us all giggling on the ground. One of our teachers walked over frowning and said, "Now that is no way a little young lady should talk, now is it." We nodded our heads and apologized racing off to get back into the game.

At that time I never thought twice about why Lillie and I had been yelled at for using "potty" talk and our friend max hadn't. I never thought about the way teachers told us to be "pretty little girls" but they never told the boys to be pretty. I never thought about the way people treated me as a girl vs the way my friend max was treated as a boy. Of course you wouldn't expect an eight year old to have that all figured out but then again you also wouldn't expect that children by 3 years old are taught how to talk based on their gender.  This memory came back to me while we were discussing how different language can establish gender. In our class discussion we spend a lot of time talking about the way children are spoken to when they are at a young age.  It is acceptable for boys to use this kind of potty talk, swear, and use violent or boastful language. On the other hand girls are told that "little girls shouldn't talk that way,". As an eight year old these phrases that were said to me often in school didn't effect me in the way that hearing it now does. Hearing these phrases repeated now as Im 18 not 8 brings me back to all the times when I was in school and was told not to talk that way or not to wear shorts that were too short because it was reveling. It is interesting to see how much some of that language has effected me and how it has probably effected many girls.

In the readings about the second graders I was also very surprised at how easy it was to tell if a girl or a boy had written the essay solely based on the stories plot. Girls typically wrote about emotion or feelings or cooperation and friends. Whereas the boys stories were typically about wining and competition and being the hero. It makes me wonder and try and remember what I wrote about when I was a little girl and even what I write about now. Does my creative writing show a similar trend as the stories from these second grade girls. Of course being in high school you are required to write on many different kinds of topics. But if I sat down and wrote a journal entry would I too write about my feelings and emotions or would I write about winning and being the hero. Should it even be a question of one or the other or should it be a mix of both? This discussion in class and as well from the readings brought me into my memories and stirred up many questions on the specific language that I grew up around.