Gender Differences - A Memory

Chapter 1

I grew up as a tomboy and never really paid attention to fashion, hairstyles or make up.  I played tag with the boys in the neighborhood, climbed dirt piles and ran barefoot in the yard.  I helped my family cut down trees, pull weeds in the garden, and stripped the house of old paint in preparation of repainting it.  It was how I grew up and I was happy just hanging out with the boys.

I remember when I was approximately 10 or 11 years of age, the cutest boy in school came up to me and said “Heather, why don’t you pay attention to your appearance?”, “Do your hair or something” and I remember going home and looking in the mirror and thinking to myself “why did he say that to me”?   It was this conversation that sparked my awareness between boys and girls; not necessarily the difference between the two but the importance of the difference between the two.  In Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia, she writes about girls and their tendencies.  Pipher says “Strong girls know who they are and value themselves as multifaceted people” and “strong girls generally manage to stay close to their families and maintain some family loyalty” (Pipher, 2010) and as I grew up I came to value myself as a girl, a lady, a woman.  I did start to pay attention to my appearance from that day forward and it did make a difference in how boys perceived me but in the end it’s all about how I perceived myself.  I can tell you that I have grown to become a beautiful, strong, sensible, passionate woman who sometimes runs barefoot in the yard, puts on makeup when I feel like it and likes to hang around with the boys and watch football.

Pipher, M. (2010). Reviving Ophelia. In M. &. Krasny, Sounds Ideas (p. 55). New York: McGraw-Hill.