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Lindsay Reyes

Mrs. Jackie Burr, Instructor

English 2010, Section 3

March 6, 2019

No, You’re a Girl

​It was on one of my many sun-filled days during one of my many elementary-school recesses

when I understood: boys and girls were different. A group of my classmates were playing

basketball, their shoes kicking up stray gravel and their laughter melting into exhausted huffs of

air. I hovered by the three-point line, watching the ball handed from boy to boy.

When I asked if I could play, the ball halted in the hands of the tall kid with lanky legs and a

lankier face. I think his name was Alex. He definitely looked like an Alex. His freckled nose

scrunched up as shook his head.

“No, you’re a girl.” Kid-Who-Looked-Like-An-Alex told me, as if it were the most obvious

thing in the world. Then he turned and the ball bounced back into play.

This confused me. Of course I was a girl. What difference did that make? I played basketball

with my dad all the time, and he was a boy. I didn’t try to argue, instead sticking my tongue out

at him and racing to the tetherball pole instead. After that recess, I didn’t try to play basketball

again.

Over all three years of middle school, my loathing for gym class grew like a ravenous forest

fire, and I happily threw fuel into the flames. It wasn’t that I didn’t love the strain of muscles as I

raced around the indoor track, or the rush of breath as I hurried to catch the ball. It was that I

never had anyone to run with, and that the ball I was open to catch never came. Football, soccer,
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basketball: all sports where the teacher was forced to split us up by gender because the girls

never tried and the boys never shared. I never thought much of it.

“Lindsay, pick up the pace!” My gym teacher barked at me one day, as I slow-jogged from

one end of the court to the other. Face flushing red, I did as she said, but there wasn’t much of a

point. Why should I hurry when I wouldn’t even get the ball anyways? Still, I shuffled my feet a

little faster and held out my hands, pretending to care about the basketball game in front of me.

All throughout elementary and middle school, I hated being “feminine.” I regarded the idea of

frilly dresses and long hair with disgust in my eyes, and I would die in shame if anyone ever

called me a “girly-girl.” I never realized why I thought femininity was so toxic, I just found

myself drifting towards chunky shoes and baggy pants. But if I got a haircut that was too short, I

worried that people would mistake me for a boy. Until now, I didn’t understand the ironic

contradiction of my views on masculinity and femininity. I wanted to “be one of the boys,” but I

also didn’t want to be ​too ​much of a boy. Being feminine meant being weak, but being masculine

was meant for boys, not girls.

I didn’t start to care about looking feminine until the end of 8th grade. It was the summer

before freshman year, and I was at my second girl’s camp, an annual religious camping trip,

which lasted three days during the sweltering summer months. I was perched in a camp chair,

talking with a few of the older girls. Dying sunlight filtered through the sparse canopy of trees,

and shoes crunching in the underbrush as the leaders prepared dinner. Smoke hung low in the

firepit at the center of our conversation, crawling between the logs as small flames threatened to

spring higher. Everything was damp from last night's’ rain, and the smell of wet bark filled my
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nostrils. I leaned back in my sagging chair, absently toying with the strings of my hoodie as the

other girls complained about how long it took them to get ready in the morning.

“It only takes ​me​ ten minutes!” I piped in, earning a few knowing smiles. “I’m never going to

care that much about how I look.”

Addyson, one of the girls, only shook her head. “Just wait,” She warned, “Soon you’re going

to worry about your hair, and your clothes, and how your breath smells.” I had frowned, not

believing her. Only a few months later, I was stocking up on mascara and eyeshadow, slathering

my face in foundation and trying to bat my eyelashes at every boy I met.

I’m meant to become a stay-at-home wife. At least, that’s what my mom tells me, eyes

earnest. My church leaders also reassure me to pursue that future occupation. I was baptized into

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints when I was 12-years-old, and it was four years

later that I was taught my role in relation to my future husband’s.

“A woman’s job is to support the man,” My leader said, pointing at a smiling picture of her

and her husband. “It’s a mutual relationship: you provide and your husband protects. He works

all day, and when he comes home you support him by cooking him dinner and taking care of the

kids.” I didn’t agree with that. That’s what my mom wants her oldest daughter to be: a woman

who doesn’t work, and instead whose only job is to dote on her husband and children. Of course,

there’s nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home wife. Raising children is hard work. But ​I ​don’t

want to put the sole income on my future husband’s shoulders. ​I​ don’t want to toil through

college, with its stressful term papers and harrowing student debts, to only spend of the rest of

my days picking up toys and cooking dinners. While it sounds nice to be able to hop back into

bed while the rest of the world wakes up, I would get bored. My mom reassures me that I
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wouldn’t, that I would find plenty of things to keep myself busy, but that isn’t what I mean. I

would get bored of not being productive. I would get bored of not contributing to society. I

would get bored of not pouring all of my energy into a problem that only I could solve. I can’t

get my name on a plaque by simply staying at home all day.

But the problem isn’t my unsatisfied desire to feel remembered, it’s the fact that a father

wouldn’t tell his son to strive to be a stay-at-home husband. No dad would take his son aside and

tell him that his future wife can do all the heavy-lifting. I don’t expect my husband to carry all of

the weight that bills, fees, and loans amount to. My mom, who has had more than enough

experience in finding extra jobs to support the family, is biased when she warns me that my

husband should be able to fully support me. I agree, but when I tell her that I should also fully

support him, she simply gives me a patient smile. I tell her that I’ll give my husband the choice

of quitting his own job to stay at home once we have kids, and her smile grows more patient.

Sure, it’s idealistic, maybe even too much so, but I believe in equality, and equality means that

a stay-at-home mom should be just as common as a stay-at-home dad. Even though boys and

girls are indeed different, they shouldn’t be treated different.