If you’re female and doing a traditionally masculine job, every time you prove your competence, you’re punching out of the box you’ve been put in.
If you’re female and doing a traditionally feminine job, every time you prove your competence, you’re proving how well you fit in the box.
Both situations come with different but complementary senses of unease. Hurt your knuckles punching out, or hurt your head trying to stand in too small a space.
The Little Engine That Could is female! And so is the red engine who breaks down on her way to bring toys and food to children. I didn’t remember this book well, so I was surprised to find this out when I started reading it to my toddler.
Incidentally, all three engines who refuse to help are self-important dudes. Well, one of them is actually an old, tired dude. His depression-era exhaustion makes me sad.
It makes me wonder if there is an intentional message hidden in the Dude-Engines’ unwillingness to help with the female task of making sure children are taken care of.
What do you do when others refuse to use your chosen name the instant someone who ranks higher in the patriarchy shows up with the same name?
I now exist in the narrow construct of The Mom Box, where my entire identity is filtered through a set of assumptions about mothers and motherhood, and it’s surprising that I eat food and have opinions.
In Part Two, The Little Mermaid’s Ariel relinquishes her badassery and delivers on the promise of feminist nightmare I had been expecting.
One thing I wasn’t expecting from The Little Mermaid? To find the title character herself even remotely interesting, let alone a beacon of competence and badassery in the midst of a literal ocean of incompetent and evil associates.
