Hi Alchemist, I'm a newbie too, another long time lurker. (It feels a bit rude in a way, like I've been sitting in the back of the pub earwigging!)
LordC, I don't even know the name of the book and this will totally out me to anyone else at story time today and it will sound mad and trivial, and I don't think I'd even try to tell anyone about it except dh and you lot, but: some sort of crappy toddler book about Christmas, one where you press buttons and it makes sounds appropriate to the pictures, like sleigh bells or a reindeer passing wind and the suchlike.
So, one of the pictures was a girl facing front, blushing slightly, and a boy sideways on, kissing her under the mistletoe. The caption "a lucky lad gets a kiss, under the mistletoe" or thereabouts. And, it was a weird experience, all this stuff was hitting me: male gaze; woman as object; man as subject; woman as passive sex-object; man as sexually active; woman as sexual gatekeeper; man as sexually active, autonomous agent; woman as ... not. I felt we were suddenly transformed into a horror movie, toddlers and all. It just felt so wrong.
I looked at everyone round the room. I think everyone else just saw a noisy, colourful book for small children.
It's not the book itself, obviously, the toddlers don't care who's kissing whom - it's the fact that this is our culture. It was totally unremarkable and was totally unnoticed, because this is our culture.
Do you think I'm overthinking this? I wasn't thinking at all tbh it was more a wave of emotion.
Rant over. Thanks for listening!
Get well soon, all you sickly people.