'You look like a girl'

[FusionChefGeoff]

DS(7) has long, surfer style hair.

He's getting grief in the playground (DH is also not a fan but that's another thread!)

The insult being thrown around is that 'he looks like a girl' and also taking his name and making into a (made up) female version.

Spoke to school who have spoken to the boys concerned. I also expressed my unhappiness at how the insult is also playing into everyday sexism that looking like a girl is an insult.

I've also explained this to DS - than there's nothing wrong with girls so how silly to try to use that as an insult!! It doesn't even make sense!! So far, he seems to be handling it all ok but it's got me thinking.

If they said, your hair makes you look like a police officer / superhero / footballer then = no insult as DS is not those things but would want to be all those things.

Girl = insult.

However, I remember a friend at school and I'm sure same applies generally nowadays who was mortified that her new hair cut made her look like a boy! Boy = insult because she wasn't one.

So am I overreacting in this instance?? Is it about kids and how they have very strong girl / boy classifications as part of growing up and blurring those lines is confusing??

He also has some jeans - they (finally) fit as he's very slim but they have a small heart embroidered in the pocket - he's refusing to wear them as they are girly.

I'm really interested in getting your takes on all of this and if my feminist hackles should be as raised as they are or do I just need to accept this is a child development thing??

I wouldn’t force him re the jeans.

Unless the shadow is unnoticeable to him then go for it.

Men with long hair - Jason Mamoa - definitely not a girl !

It's a difficult one because I think it's good he wants to not conform and have his hair how he wishes. I think in my DD's class all boys have short hair, and all the girls have long hair. No one is outside of this norm at all. In the school there are a couple of boys with long hair and a few girls with bob haircuts but I can't think of one girl in the whole primary school with a short pixie style cut at all. Definitely don't make him wear the jeans though, with the heart. A plain patch is a good idea to cover the shadow.

I'd definitely get a patch for the jeans, something that's iron on would be easy enough.

I'd probably push the Thor angle re the hair. And Jason Momoa!

Keep talking to the school if the name calling in the playground comes back, it will be good for other kids to hear that long hair doesn't make a girl and short hair doesn't make a boy - it might help counteract any trans nonsense they're being fed in other areas too.

I think there's a subtle difference between the impact of "you look like a girl" and "you look like a boy". To me, a girl being told she looks like a boy is a way of saying "you're ugly", it's a failure to be pretty, to look like a boy. Whereas the reverse isn't true, a boy isn't being told he looks too pretty when he's told he looks like a girl. I'd say that was more of a "you look like something lesser" because all elements of being a girl are seen as a less appealing, shameful alternative to being a boy. It's a variant of "don't be such a girl" type phrases that mean don't be weak, don't be pathetic.

By the time he's in secondary lots more boys will have longer hair. Depending on where you live, short hair on boys can be seen as quite 'chavvy'. Long tousled mops are definitely a middle class marker in a lot of the schools I've taught in.

This is from Etsy, would probably do the trick with the jeans at least.

Part of it is that at 7 a long haired boy actually does "look like a girl" as long hair is a cultural marker of sex, and in such young pre pubescent children culturally expected artificial markers are the only way to tell.

Putting things and people in categories is essential for not only functional communication with others, but to organise coherent thought. For this reason learning to categorise is a very important developmental phase. Children learn to apply very rigid categories with very superficial, obvious markers, before learning about exceptions and subtlety and the reasons not to categorise or stereotype so rigidly...

I think this one comes down to child development.

I had a long haired son who asked to cut his hair at 5 because adult's were insisting on refering to him as a girl even when corrected, which IMO is fairly unforgivable and totally different to children's reactions. Obviously I let him cut it - it's his hair not mine.

He's growing it again at nearly 9 - he wants to look like Qui Gon Jin from Star Wars...

Up to about 10 or 11 years old boys and girls look very similar. I think this is partly why dress and hair conventions are used to make them easily distinguishable.

Once past puberty it is much more obvious which sex people are so it's easier to go against conventions whilst your sex is mostly clear.

He's growing it again at nearly 9 - he wants to look like Qui Gon Jin from Star Wars...

Awesome!

I had an interesting conversation with my dd about shoes. Which concluded that she knew they were just shoes which kept her feet dry and were good for football, but everyone at school would say they were boys shoes. And tease her accordingly. But that, on balance, she rather be teased for not having the right sort of shoes for a girl than have wet, cold feet. But she hadn’t felt that way in Y2, but as a mature Y4 ( ) she felt differently.

So I think this is about other kids imposing their stereotypes, not purely a ‘girly is bad’ thing.

SheShriekedShrilly- same as my DD this year - she always had the patent Mary Jane type shoes, but this year so she could play football with the boys, she chose a different style. They are girls’ shoes, but a lace up style. Much more practical and in fact the older girls , year 5 and 6 , tend to wear more trainer type black shoes rather than the pretty ones the little infant girls all wear.

I managed to get year 1 DD into lace up brogues for wetter days. She's excited by them because the laces mean their "big girl shoes", I'm excited she won't have to get wet feet!

Can’t be arsed to sew on one patch?!
Lucky you don’t have a girl guide or Boy Scout, you’d be well practiced in the art of sewing patches and then picking them off and rewsewing dozens in a single night when they go up a level!!

Two patches one on each cheek!

I've done some artistic work with a fine paintbrush and some bleach and turned the heart into part of a football! Hard to explain but the embroidery was right in the edge of the pocket where it joined the jeans so was a very hard to get to place for any sewing.

Accusing a boy of being like a girl has been the go to misogynist insult for as long as I can remember.
Why is it socially acceptable to hate girls? That is what I would like explained.