You're Such a Man!

It is amazing how much information and ideas a young child can absorb from elementary school. They develop ideas that impact everything about their lifestyle and information that would last a lifetime. School is where a child spends most of their time and does most of their learning. Acquiring both the knowledge of what is taught in books, as well as knowledge about social life and ideologies of the world. Second to religion, if not even greater than religion, school has an outstanding impact on a child’s upbringing and thought patterns. Children are exposed to things they cannot control and feed off of their peers’ ideas. This is what happened to me.
“Lauraine! You’re such a man!”
Those were the words I heard all the time. I knew I wasn’t truly a man, so these comments did not affect me drastically. I could not find anything that differed from the other girls and I, except that I could win an arm wrestling match against any of the boys in my class. But why was this the cause for me being called a man? Why couldn’t women be strong, or just stronger than men? All the women in my family were muscular and lean. Throughout school, I did not see anything wrong with me being athletic and muscular. No one ever told me whether women were or were not supposed to be strong or stronger than men. I just went along with the way I observed things growing up. It was not until 5th grade where the kids really became vocal about my appearance. They called me “wonder woman,” “Hercules,” and other foolishness. Most of the time I just laughed at it. I actually found it amusing and felt like I was the star of the show sometimes. The comments were never to the point where my feelings were hurt, but I began to critically think, to the extent that my mind allowed, about why, what to me was a slight difference, called for such an exaggerated title to be given to me. After some thought, I was having a discussion with a small group of kids in the class, mostly boys, and I thought it would be right to bring up what was on my mind. I asked, “Why do you have to call me a man? Why can’t I just be a strong girl who plays sports?” Once that was stated, one little bold classmate of mine decided to say, “Because girls can’t play sports, and girls are weak little creatures who are scared of bugs, so that must make you a boy!” From then on, I was shocked; this is what my class thinks about women. If I was the only person in my class who did not feel that way, I thought about how the world felt about my family. We were made up of strong independent women. We stood to the biblical view that men, or the husbands, should be the head of the households, but my mother never had to call my father over to open a jar for her. My older sister even changed a tire on the car one vacation! What I learned from my 5th grade classmates stayed with me, in fact, it changed the way I behaved as I moved into junior high school. I had a different perspective as to how my peers viewed the opposite sex and I decided I wanted to be more like a girl to the rest of the world. Some may call me weak for giving in, but I feel it’s just the process of life. No one knows whether I would have remained a tomboy up until today. I didn’t know where my classmates were coming from, but this finally opened my eyes to the complex subject of masculinity and femininity.