My nerd is showing.

13th January 2012

Post with 3 notes

My coworker came up to me with this (hideous) purple/pink shimmery ribbon, and says “This is so pretty! I would love to see a little girl with a bow of this ribbon pretending to be a princess! It would be so cute!”

And I said, “It would be really cute to see a boy with it, too!”

“But it wouldn’t be the same.”
“Why not?”
“Because girls are princesses. It’s like an inherent desire to pretend to be a princess when you’re a little girl.”

“The little girl will probably never be a princess, so it’s pretend. The little boy will probably also never be a princess, so it’s also pretend. It’s the same. And what’s inherent about wanting to be a princess? The concept of ‘Princess’ is a human construct.”

“But girls just have this desire to be treated like…”
“A useless figurehead traditionally meant to be seen but not heard, and whose power comes from the males with whom she associates?”

“Royalty.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No, a girl wants to feel beautiful, it’s a biological way of attracting a mate, and-“

“I think you’d be amazed at how much a female’s desire to be beautiful is direct result of societal norms. Most species have a gender that tries to be attractive, and it tends to be based on the ratio of males to females; more males mean more competition between them, so they need to be more attractive. The same goes for when there are more females. The less numerous sex generally chooses the partner, but humans have an almost 50/50 ratio, so the desire to be beautiful should be inherent in both sexes.”

“But men like to have power and pursue things, girls like to be chased.”

“Many girls don’t like to be chased. And many men do. That’s an incredibly archaic viewpoint.”

“Well, it’s based in an old Christian concept that men are supposed to have power over their women.”

“So it’s not an inherent desire, it’s religious. A human construct.”

“I can tell I’m not going to get you to agree with me, I just think that it would be cute to see a little girl with that bow in her hair.”

“It would be equally cute to see a little boy.”

Tagged: What the shiiiit.