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Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress
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From: Christine Baldacchino <clbaldacchino_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2014 16:58:49 -0400
Hi Everyone! Wow, KT! Thank you for the wonderful introduction, and for inviting me to join in on the discussion.
When I grew up, I was the quintessential "tom boy" who, much to my mother's dismay, enjoyed playing with my brother's Hot Wheels collection and pushing toy trucks around in the dirt. I had a preference for my brother's hand-me-downs to my big sister's. While my mum was happy that at least she didn't have to worry about my younger sister and I fighting over clothes
(she was the uber to my anti-femininity), she found my "masculinity" worrisome.
Flash-forward about fifteen to twenty years and I still can't make my mum happy when it comes to certain things. I cut my hair too short for her taste. It "makes me look like a lesbian", apparently. I don't wear earrings, and I don't leave the house wearing jewelry nearly as often as she thinks a woman should. I love my Doc Martens and my sneakers, and I don't always sit with my legs crossed. I'm always patient with her, though. She and I can laugh and banter back and forth about her outdated ideas of how a "real" woman should look and act now, but I still remember how much it hurt back then. You just don't forget stuff like that.
When I started working with kids, I was actually rather shocked by how little things had changed. Parents from *my* time were trying to curb their daughters from playing with trucks and digging around too much in the sandbox. As if to compensate for their daughters' "tom boyish" behaviour, they'd dress them in the most impractical outfits - skirts with crinoline beneath them, shiny dress shoes with impossibly small buckles over itchy tights, and elaborate hair accessories that would always end up in the bottoms of their knapsacks, backs of their cubbies, or even abandoned in the washroom sinks by lunchtime.
Over the years, I met several boys who had no interest in trucks, trains or superheroes. If the girls had it bad, the boys had it worse. The main concern with parents of girls seemed to be mostly aesthetic. "I have an adorable daughter who looks just adorable in dresses." When a boy would show an interest in fairy wings, dresses, or even cooking, I'd sometimes be taken aside and asked to encourage their son to dump the dolls and take up something more masculine. One boy played with the kitchen set all day because his father wouldn't allow him to have one of his own to play with at home. Another boy loved listening to music and dancing. I was asked to cut him off from the music center. Real boys don't dance, apparently.
I didn't actually sit down to write Morris, though, until another teacher I worked with took a dress out of the dress-up center and hid it to keep one particular boy from playing with it. For days, the boy would come to school and ask about it. I didn't know where it ended up after it was taken, so I couldn't even give him an answer. Then one day he asked if it was because he wasn't supposed to be wearing it. He promised the teacher who removed it that, if she brought it back, he wouldn't wear it anymore.
He just wanted to see it again. He loved it so much that if he couldn't wear it, he at least wanted to be able to look at it. I wanted him to have his dress back, and Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress was my way of giving it to him.
Christine Baldacchino
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Received on Wed 21 May 2014 03:59:15 PM CDT
Date: Wed, 21 May 2014 16:58:49 -0400
Hi Everyone! Wow, KT! Thank you for the wonderful introduction, and for inviting me to join in on the discussion.
When I grew up, I was the quintessential "tom boy" who, much to my mother's dismay, enjoyed playing with my brother's Hot Wheels collection and pushing toy trucks around in the dirt. I had a preference for my brother's hand-me-downs to my big sister's. While my mum was happy that at least she didn't have to worry about my younger sister and I fighting over clothes
(she was the uber to my anti-femininity), she found my "masculinity" worrisome.
Flash-forward about fifteen to twenty years and I still can't make my mum happy when it comes to certain things. I cut my hair too short for her taste. It "makes me look like a lesbian", apparently. I don't wear earrings, and I don't leave the house wearing jewelry nearly as often as she thinks a woman should. I love my Doc Martens and my sneakers, and I don't always sit with my legs crossed. I'm always patient with her, though. She and I can laugh and banter back and forth about her outdated ideas of how a "real" woman should look and act now, but I still remember how much it hurt back then. You just don't forget stuff like that.
When I started working with kids, I was actually rather shocked by how little things had changed. Parents from *my* time were trying to curb their daughters from playing with trucks and digging around too much in the sandbox. As if to compensate for their daughters' "tom boyish" behaviour, they'd dress them in the most impractical outfits - skirts with crinoline beneath them, shiny dress shoes with impossibly small buckles over itchy tights, and elaborate hair accessories that would always end up in the bottoms of their knapsacks, backs of their cubbies, or even abandoned in the washroom sinks by lunchtime.
Over the years, I met several boys who had no interest in trucks, trains or superheroes. If the girls had it bad, the boys had it worse. The main concern with parents of girls seemed to be mostly aesthetic. "I have an adorable daughter who looks just adorable in dresses." When a boy would show an interest in fairy wings, dresses, or even cooking, I'd sometimes be taken aside and asked to encourage their son to dump the dolls and take up something more masculine. One boy played with the kitchen set all day because his father wouldn't allow him to have one of his own to play with at home. Another boy loved listening to music and dancing. I was asked to cut him off from the music center. Real boys don't dance, apparently.
I didn't actually sit down to write Morris, though, until another teacher I worked with took a dress out of the dress-up center and hid it to keep one particular boy from playing with it. For days, the boy would come to school and ask about it. I didn't know where it ended up after it was taken, so I couldn't even give him an answer. Then one day he asked if it was because he wasn't supposed to be wearing it. He promised the teacher who removed it that, if she brought it back, he wouldn't wear it anymore.
He just wanted to see it again. He loved it so much that if he couldn't wear it, he at least wanted to be able to look at it. I wanted him to have his dress back, and Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress was my way of giving it to him.
Christine Baldacchino
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Received on Wed 21 May 2014 03:59:15 PM CDT
