Hi!
Today was my last gymnastics class of the semester :( I am really going to miss it. I had a great time in the class, cheering on my friends and laughing with them when one of us did something silly. I also met all kinds of people I never would have met outside of class.
It was also a really worthwhile experience. Going into the class my only gymnatics experience was in elementary school gym. At first it was a little intimidating because some of the people in my class had been real gymnasts and knew what they were doing. But as the semester went along, I made friends and none of us really knew what we were doing and we just had a good time.
I also learned to do so many cool skills I never thought I would be able to do. I rolled over the bar and round-offs off of the beam and backhand springs over these rolly mats. It was really satisfying to take on these challenges and think "I'll never be able to do that" and then prove myself wrong. I learned that I can do a lot of things if I put my mind to it. I mean I've always been able to work hard at school type stuff, but this was something totally new to me and it felt really good that I was able to improve a lot over the course of the semester.
A lot of the credit goes to my fabulous professor Marene Van Farowe. She is wonderful. She knows how to push us out of our comfort zones, but still not push us past our limits. She never made us do things if we really felt uncomfortable, but was always there to help if we wanted to try. She was also great at telling when someone needed positive feedback. I was not that confident at first and she was always giving me compliments, slowly building up my confidence. By the end of the semester I was ready for anything :)
Today was our Olympics and it was so much fun! Bragging a little bit, my routine went really well and the judges gave me all golds :) I'm going to miss my friends, the fun and hanging out on the balance beam!
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
boys vs. girls
This may be a long rant...just warning you.
In my Child Development class today we were talking about gender differences. A lot of the things we talked about made sense, but there is one area, which my prof mentioned briefly, which always makes me angry. The way we still have "boy toys" and "girl toys," and other things that are gender defined. I realize that no matter what we do, these types of gender disticntions are still going to exist, but the way we deal with them still bothers me.
What bothers me most is that generally it has become acceptable for girls to take part in "boy" activities and play with "boy toys" but the reverse is not true. Little girls can, luckily, play Little League, soccer and basketball. It is perfectly acceptable in our society for girls to wear boy colors and play with boy toys (I got tired of the quotation marks). Giving girls toy trains or cars or trucks for her birthday is no big deal. We have little to no problem allowing our daughters to do boy things or girl things.
However, we don't allow our boys these same options. For the most part little boys are not encouraged to take ballet. Boys wearing pink are almost unheard of. Giving a boy a doll to play with is highly rare. I know the father of two young kids, a boy and a girl, who cringes when anyone mentions buying his son a doll for his birthday, yet he has no qualms when his daughter is given Matchbox cars or building blocks. Why the hypocrisy?
This does not stop when children grow up. We generally tend to find it acceptable for adolescent girls to be tomboys, but sissy is a definite putdown for an adolescent male. Female professional athletes are praised (as they should be) but male ballet dancers or ice skaters are mocked or assumed to be gay. We expect our female politicians to embody male characteristics of strength, unemotionality and toughness. Yet we find emotional, sensitive male politicians to be soft and undesirable.
What really bothers me is that I feel that this signals a deeper problem. We continue to value the charcteristics we denote as male and put down those associated with females. I feel that these seemingly innocent facade is hiding the belief that it is OK for our females to act male, because male is the "favorable" position and their charcteristics are "better." Since women are "below" men it is all right for them to "raise" themselves to the higher position of men. However for a male to act "female" is unfavorable because the male is already in the higher position and should not lower himself to the level of the female.
While we have certainly come leaps and bounds by allowing females to choose traditionally male or female activities, we still have a ways to come to allow our males the same choices. Is anyone still reading? Sorry to go on and on and this is probably very rambly, but something just need to be said :) (P.S. I also wrote a reaction paper about this in my Diversity in Education class, which may be one reason I had so much to say :)
In my Child Development class today we were talking about gender differences. A lot of the things we talked about made sense, but there is one area, which my prof mentioned briefly, which always makes me angry. The way we still have "boy toys" and "girl toys," and other things that are gender defined. I realize that no matter what we do, these types of gender disticntions are still going to exist, but the way we deal with them still bothers me.
What bothers me most is that generally it has become acceptable for girls to take part in "boy" activities and play with "boy toys" but the reverse is not true. Little girls can, luckily, play Little League, soccer and basketball. It is perfectly acceptable in our society for girls to wear boy colors and play with boy toys (I got tired of the quotation marks). Giving girls toy trains or cars or trucks for her birthday is no big deal. We have little to no problem allowing our daughters to do boy things or girl things.
However, we don't allow our boys these same options. For the most part little boys are not encouraged to take ballet. Boys wearing pink are almost unheard of. Giving a boy a doll to play with is highly rare. I know the father of two young kids, a boy and a girl, who cringes when anyone mentions buying his son a doll for his birthday, yet he has no qualms when his daughter is given Matchbox cars or building blocks. Why the hypocrisy?
This does not stop when children grow up. We generally tend to find it acceptable for adolescent girls to be tomboys, but sissy is a definite putdown for an adolescent male. Female professional athletes are praised (as they should be) but male ballet dancers or ice skaters are mocked or assumed to be gay. We expect our female politicians to embody male characteristics of strength, unemotionality and toughness. Yet we find emotional, sensitive male politicians to be soft and undesirable.
What really bothers me is that I feel that this signals a deeper problem. We continue to value the charcteristics we denote as male and put down those associated with females. I feel that these seemingly innocent facade is hiding the belief that it is OK for our females to act male, because male is the "favorable" position and their charcteristics are "better." Since women are "below" men it is all right for them to "raise" themselves to the higher position of men. However for a male to act "female" is unfavorable because the male is already in the higher position and should not lower himself to the level of the female.
While we have certainly come leaps and bounds by allowing females to choose traditionally male or female activities, we still have a ways to come to allow our males the same choices. Is anyone still reading? Sorry to go on and on and this is probably very rambly, but something just need to be said :) (P.S. I also wrote a reaction paper about this in my Diversity in Education class, which may be one reason I had so much to say :)
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