playing with boys

As a girl growing up, you learn one fundamental lesson: girls play with dolls while boys play with balls (not their own mind you). While social restrictions are changing in favor of girls putting Barbie on the backburner and participating in sports and other activities to promote independence, strength and competitiveness, it seems there will never be the general acceptance for girls to engage in these activities as there is for boys. As we get older, while we are no longer expected to brush our favorite dolls hair, we are expected to still maintain an air of propriety while the boys come home disheveled from a day of romping outdoors with clearly no regard for appropriate behavior. But this is accepted. And so it continues onward as we get older. Exchanging one societal pressure for another.

As women, we are expected to constantly maintain a flawless appearance but yet not be high maintenance or take the necessary time to achieve said flawlessness. Men claim they want no frills, low maintenance women but also want us to always look our best so they can brag to their friends about how beautiful their girlfriend is. Apparently we are to magically transform ourselves into celebrity beauty without taking the necessary five hours of primping they undergo to look as beautiful as they do. What high expectations they have of us.

Expectations increase even further when entering into the realm of sports. Men don't want a strong athlete woman who can beat them in sports nor do they want a woman who is so non-athletic that she ducks when a ball comes her way to avoid breaking a nail. So the compromise I suppose is to be a strong athlete woman who looks like the non-athletic high maintenance woman. If you are too good at sports you become one of the boys. If you are not good enough you simply don't get to play.

When will the day come that men will learn to appreciate the strong, independent woman. The one whose beauty does not simply lie in the flawlessness of her skin? Are emotions so fickle that they can not see past what is on the outside? Social pressure is slowly wavering and women are growing up stronger and more independent than ever before. We are no longer placid, dainty creatures who thrive on the happiness of our man. The 50s housewife is extinct. When will the desires of men sway to accommodate the new beauty that women possess?