Sex ed - shaving legs in year 5

[Candycoco]

Have posted in education but posting here for traffic.

Dd came home from school today having had sex ed at school for the past 2 days.

I've always been very open with her and have answered questions as they've come up, so no big revelations this week.

However, she told me today that the boys were taught how to shave by male teacher, and girls were taught how to shave their legs. This just doesn't sit right with me. I know 99% of women do shave their legs and it's something I've already talked to dd about as she asked me last year about it and I told her she has to wait til end of year 6 before she starts secondary to do it.

I just feel it's a bit presumptuous and suggests all girls should. Maybe I'm being bit uptight about it but I don't like the message it sends. Is this normal to teach this as park of sex ed?

Thanks

My DDs wouldn't have read about Julia Roberts (from 'Pretty Woman', the film that made prostitution look like a reasonable lifestyle choice?) and her armpits,

Heh. That brings back memories.

Anyway, if your daughters are unaware of the furore around Ms Roberts' armpits, that might be simply because they're of the wrong generation. That was something that happened around years ago, as in maybe 15 years ago. As a young teenager, it certainly affected me: to this day, I don't have the courage to wear sleeveless tops.

But it had nowt to do with women's magazines, because my mother certainly didn't buy them and nor did I. She did, however, buy newspapers, and Julia Roberts' starring role in Adult Post-Pubescent Woman Has Axillary Hair was covered. Even in broadsheets (The Times, my grandmother's paper, and the Guardian, my mother's).

Naturally, the tabloids covered it in far more detail, particularly in the weekend sections.

Body hair removal has not always been fashionable. The ancient Egyptians were keen on it as part of religious ritual. Barbarians were so called because they were hairy. So I guess it was more to do with a concept of civilization than seduction.

Men shave their beards (or not) as a signal of social integration as much as for any other reason.

And women shave their legs as a signal of social integration as much as for any other reason. I'm not sure why seduction has to come into it.

lurked there aren't any programs saying 'girls can't be engineers' but there are endless programs in which the character that does the fixing and is good with machines is male, while the character that worries she isn't pretty enough is female.

If people see enough examples of the fact that engineering is a male role then they will believe that it is. You don't have to tell them explicitly.

I also didn't tell DD how to spot the girls from boys either...I just referred to them by gender often enough in the course of everyday life that she worked out the rules for herself. The ones in pink or skirts are girls....the others are boys.

Watching the movie Planes the other day...DD wondered if the reason why there were only two girl planes in the race was because girls aren't as good at racing and all the other girl planes were still practising.

All it takes is for girls not to be equally represented in books, TV, films etc. and children work out the rest for themselves.

I don't see many examples of engineering on TV or in advertising, whether parading male or female role models. It has a rather low profile in general. There are rather a lot of silly cartoons about ineffectual male princes falling in love with feisty princesses and neither of them ever having to get their hands dirty, though, which do neither sex much credit. And there is an excess of pink in the girls' section of clothing shops, but unlike boys, girls can wear any colour without embarrassment and can wear trousers, so the only "rule" you can really make out is that boys must never wear pink or skirts, not that girls have to, unless that's what their mothers tell them they have to do. As for male/female branded toys - that's an irritation, but it's the parents who choose the toys, not the children at the age of 3, surely?

Tbh, I would be seriously concerned about the nursery or childminder that my child was attending if they came home with attitudes like your dd's at such a young age, because coming to rigid gender conclusions like that is, in my experience, unusual for a 3-year old - certainly around this neck of the woods, anyway!

well she doesn't go to nursery...so no use blaming them.

We don't have a TV so she doesn't actually get to see adverts either.

but OMG have you seen kids adverts? The boys are all playing with racing cars and nerf guns...and very occasionally sciency geeky toys and its all 'can be the best' and 'are you the fastest/strongest/smartest?'

the girls are all playing with plastic role playing tat, and pretend make up and accessories, and 'make bracelets with your friends' and 'everyone wants to look their best for the ball'

Honestly it is a total miracle any girls go into STEM subjects at all.

DD (now 4 yo) does talk to other children though....at the swimming pool she has an encounter almost every week with some kid demanding to know why she is wearing a blue batman swim suit if she is a girl....(oh I don't know because she fucking wants to maybe?) There is a kid she plays out with occasionally (8/9 ish) who is obsessed with whether or not she is a 'tom boy' (no she is just a fucking normal girl dressing and playing the way she wants to).

If you think kids don't have rigid ideas of gender and gendered roles at any age above 2-3 then all I can think of is that you haven't actually spoken to any on the issue.

Try asking 'what do think good jobs for girls are?'

icebeing I second rabbits response. I also think it's insulting my childs intelligence (for my read many) to suggest they can't reason between ye olden days/ weird ideas and what is applicable to them. I was an obsessive reader well into adult literature long before puberty, with if anything far more sexist stereotypes than feminist or equal rights in my life experience, with relatively little exposure to other cultures by today's standards. And yet when I read gone with the wind as a preteen which is crammed with sexism, domestic abuse and racism, at no point did I consider it even vaguely relevant to either me or my ideas about other races. history, yes, me, no. Ditto Jane Austen etc, as far as gender influence went, it was just a story. The only cross over view I ever formed was that Jane eyre was a weak minded fool with a victim complex who deserved all she got, and I do remember identifying her with people of both genders I knew in real life. But none of them made a jot of difference to my own belief that I was equal to any man.

i'll bring it up with her after icebeing and report back. Don't think the toy adverts argument works either, never put mine off wanting 'boys' toys. If anything it just proves what rabbit said, nobody ever thought it was odd or unacceptable my dd had tool kits, car toys, science kits etc, but I'm sure nobody would get universal approval for buying their son tea sets, dolls and jewellery kits

IceBeing - it sounds to me as though not having a TV and not going to a playgroup or nursery has resulted in your dd being rather more susceptible than the average child to believing anything any other children tell her! Maybe she hasn't actually had enough experience of other children and adverts to be able to tell that not all children think and say the things that a small number of children at a swimming pool have said to her! Whatever it is, your experience and your dd's experience are in no way my experience and I have two children who regularly watch TV and have been to playgroups and school, and I regularly go into the school to read and do maths with the children. I have never encountered any 3 year-old girls who think that girls can't race or can't be engineers. By the time the children are 6, there is more evidence of gender stereotyping, with boys tending to be less keen on reading than girls, and girls having an irritating obsession with reading Rainbow Fairies, and boys wanting to talk about football, but if you ask them what they want to do for careers, you don't tend to find the girls saying they actually want to be Rainbow Fairies. They say all sorts.

My oldest DD is 25. Her fondest ambition as a little girl was to one day own her own apartment and wear tops that showed her tummy like Brittney Spears, who was all the rage back in the early 90s. DD graduated from a leading university with a degree in economics, owns her own apartment and probably a few crop tops, which I see are back in again. DD1 likes fashion.

She would have been 9 or 10 at the time of the Julia Roberts armpit hair incident that got so much attention, about the same age the OP's DD is now. A little investigation reveals that the choice of a few more women to not shave armpit hair has been remarked upon since then, on and off through DD1's and DD2's teen years in fact.

DD1 watched lots and lots of TV as a child, both with and without ads, both children's programmes and tripe aimed at the teen market, and also read lots and went to chess camp, and wore pink clothes, and loved jewellery making so much she has kept it up and sells her work online. She hated the all girls high school I tried to interest her in and even the IB programme wasn't enough to entice her, so I sent her to the big coed public high school instead, where she thrived.

I agree with Rabbit about the narrowness of male gender roles vs the broader avenues open to girls.

I don't know why someone would imply that there is such a thing as "good jobs for girls" either in a statement or in a question.

Ok icebeing after hearing what at 11 are her future ideas, which despite her hair removal, like of pink etc, are all stem subject based, and mainly male dominated roles. The none stem subject career that she mentioned is a male dominated sport. With regards gender limiting job roles, she couldn't really get what I was on about, without bringing up historical stuff, and I wasn't about to expand. Only modern job she thinks is for only men or only women is when someone wants a same sex carer for bathing and dressing ( they weren't her exact words she phrased it 'when x needed...' )

Okay let me tell you some facts and see if you still think it is insulting children's intelligence to suggest that the media and society implant damaging ideas into their sub-conscious (or when younger, conscious).

A job application for a science based job was written. It was then sent to hundreds of academics to review. Some academics got the application with a male name at the top, some with a female. The application itself was unchanged.

The results on how qualified the candidate was, what starting salary they should be on and whether or not the academic would offer mentoring where recorded and analysed according to the gender of the name on the top.

Applications with a female name were judged to be about 10% less competent than those with male names. The female names were suggested to get a 10% lower starting salary than the male names. The female names were far less likely to be offered mentoring.

So is it insulting the intelligence of children to say they are susceptible to the message that girls can't do science when leading academics in science subject demonstrate the results of the same idea?

No. It is just a fact of life. All these academics if asked would say that women are just as good as STEM subjects as men because (like lurked's 11 yo) they consciously believe that to be true. But when you ask them to make a decision based on this fact they reveal what they really think underneath the conscious layer, which is that women aren't as good at STEM as men.

But lurked and rabbit can continue to believe girls aren't damaged by the constant messages that their appearance and sexual attractiveness are their paramount attributes....I will continue to look at the actual data on everything from the rise in teenage plastic surgery to women being paid less in STEM areas than male colleagues and know just how wrong they are.

And yet icebeing my child, has continued/ will continue to have the self belief her gender has no impact on what she can achieve or expect in life, which for all of your principles doesn't appear to be the case for your child. Because whether you give a child the message they can't do something because of their gender ( or hair colour, height, class or anything else for that matter) by telling them they are actually the inferior gender, or because society at large will treat them as inferior, the result is pretty much the same, they've already been told they won't succeed. And self belief in your own equality will have a far bigger impact both on your own life, and changing society as a whole, in the areas society does need changing

lurked the only difference between our children is age!

Your DD has learned over the top of the inbuilt biases. My DD hasn't yet.

Are you really not getting that?

Also - women are equally biased against women in science as men.

It is absolutely our inbuilt biases that hold us back more than the biases of others against us, but you are being deliberately obtuse if you think these biases don't exist in either you or your daughter.

IceBeing - at no point have I said I don't think women are damaged by constant messages about their appearances and sexual attractiveness. What I have said is that this is not imposed on them by men, it is something that women inflict on each other more often than men do it, and quite often with impunity, because they are other women. After all, if women stay at home to bring up the children more than men, then who's the one in the greatest position of strength to create sexist little boys, and girls who think they are no good at science?

I have also said that I don't see why you have to lump every single thing women do into the same agenda. I personally don't see leg shaving as any different from face shaving - I do not see it as some massive advert about sexual availability, and once you've shaved your legs, then that's that little bit of social integration done and dusted; you don't get people saying you've shaved all wrong and made it look worse. High heeled shoes, pointy shoes, impractical clothes and make up I view differently, because they interfere with your ability to DO things and MAKE you focus on how you look, because you are too bl**dy uncomfortable to do anything other than stand around being stared at. I DO object to that - I will NOT be a clothes horse. Yes, I would rather look attractive than ugly, but only in a way that doesn't interfere with my personal comfort and ability to join in properly with life. I would have thought most men would rather be thought of as attractive than ugly, provided it doesn't interfere with their ability to get on with things, too.

What you seem to be getting wrong is the age at which the problems really become ingrained. You do not have to train views out of a 3-year old. However, by the time a child is 6, they are picking up more signals, and some of the parents are having "pamper parties" for the girls (this is ALWAYS organised by the mother - I've never known a father suggest such a thing for their child...) and laser quest for the boys, rather than unisex running about. By the time a child is at secondary school, then they've started wearing the stupid clothes and have hairstyles that mustn't be messed up.

Three year old children do NOT have any of these issues, yet, unless paranoid parents are reinforcing them massively at home, or making a colossal issue out of it, so that they start to obsess themselves about what it means to be male or female. When I was 3, other children were just other children to play with and some were more irritating than others, and some wanted to play really boring games that I didn't want to join in on.

I disagree ice because at a young age you stated your child had already formed ideas about how gender impacted her life. My experience and opinion is the opposite in that as my dd gets older gender implications will begin to change her ideas on her self worth. Right now she takes it as given that physical strength wise she's a match for any male her age, and in the majority of cases stronger. But is already aware that despite being the adult equivalent of her, for sheer physical strength I'm not the equal of the majority of males my age. And as the boys her age catch up on the puberty growth spurt, that will become more of an obvious impact on her. ( not from a violent or bad way I'm talking very basic no longer taller, broader and more muscular than the average lad her age). And I agree it's possible that either rightly (eg mens physiche in general making them faster sprinters) or wrongly ( your application example) will effect her sense of self worth. But as she gets older the world will need to disprove my daughters long term inbuilt belief she is equal, rather than her trying to prove to the world she is.

Oh, and I have personally managed to get through life assuming that I am an individual, not a statistic, or stereotype of the female sex. I am good at science. That doesn't affect whether other women are good at science or not, or other men. Why should I assume I am not good at science just because lots of other women aren't good at it? How crass is that as an assumption?

And it must be so unbearably irritating for women who are genuinely interested in arty subjects and bored by STEM subjects to be told that they are merely conforming to gender stereotypes and must do science. Women are always being told what they ought to be doing - stay at home; do science; don't stay at home; wear different clothes; clean behind your fridge; stand up for yourself more; be less aggressive; be more aggressive (but only after voice training)... With so many messages floating about, telling women they now have to be beautiful AND scientific AND earth mothers AND career women, AND turn things they thought were a non-issue into a massive issue, no wonder some perfectionists and people-pleasers are getting stressed and confused. Pressure is always being put on women to change their behaviour to suit someone else's agenda.

3-year old children are in general blissfully unaware of all that, though...

IceBeing, surely it is the male scientists that are being damaged by the 'constant portrayal' of girls as fluffy, pink-pony-obsessed lightweights? They are the ones who have somehow managed to absorb that message and apply it to women in science after all, despite what their own experience and direct observations of women as students and colleagues has presumably shown them.

In the heel of the hunt, they are the ones whose flawed decision-making process makes them look like stupid people and also very bad scientists. Not the well-qualified women from your example who presumably live in a world of pink stuff but still managed to emerge with STEM degrees.

It's part of the way people incessantly pigeon-hole each other, isn't it? If you like to spend time on your appearance, you aren't supposed to like spending time on academic study. Men get it too, with the whole "mad scientist" thing, and "academics wearing socks with their sandals." It's just that a man would have to do an awful lot to get people thinking, "he's just trying to get women to want to have sex with him" (eg turn up with rippling, bronzed muscles and no shirt, with a bow tie around his neck, looking like he's ready to do a stripping routine), whereas all a woman has to do, apparently, is shave her legs and she's advertising that she's gagging for it... according to a lot of people on here, at least. And a man turning up dressed like a male stripper would probably also be judged to be lacking in a few brain cells.

I have to say, if Brian Cox did a physics programme on TV dressed as a male stripper, I'm not sure how much of the physics I would take in.

rabbit we've found a point we have very different views on! I'd be having inner turmoil as to whether to watch for the physics or turn over.