As the youngest of three and the only girl, my mom wanted nothing more than to put me in dresses with ribbons in my hair. I wanted nothing more than to tag along after my oldest brother and play football in the street. Soccer was the encouraged sport in our house and I was a wicked left wing. My dad drilled me with my left foot until it was better than my right. He was sure that this would be an advantage when I went onto a competitive team. He was right.
The other side of me was extremely creative. Every Saturday, I kid you not, my dad would wake us up with the strains of "Tequila" on his saxophone... and he was good. We all played at least one instrument and were in band. I think that I had an opportunity to be less of a geek than my brothers because I played flute and piano rather than clarinet which was considered about as dorky as the trombone, or at least that is what my twisted little mind thought. I also think that one of my brothers was a geek because of his whole "D and D" thing. Yeah, that could have been it. I could imitate almost any singer from the time that I was five. When we weren't listening to my dad's favorite music (Oldies) on road trips, I was the entertainment. "Do Miss Hannigan from Annie" or "Do Dolly Parton's Nine to Five". As the youngest child, I was always up for the attention.
But my mother! Here I had all of this wonderful, healthy male contact and my mom wanted to wreck it all with frilly pink dresses. First, let me say that I already have pink in my complexion and I look like garbage in it. She kept trying to force her ideas of what was feminine and appropriate on me. She didn't win. The only time that I would ever willingly put on a dress or skirt was if it was required for a play that I was in or if I wanted to show off my soccer legs.
Other pieces of 'feminine' in my life were hair curlers. Not the soft, spongy ones, but the hard plastic ones. The kind that you used bobby pins to hold in place. Ouch and Yikes! So I went to school every day with these long sausage curls in pony tails. I was blessed the day that I discovered the bob hairstyle and only had to curl it a tad to please her. In fact, I still fall back on that hairstyle today whenever she is pestering me or I am depressed... I'll have to take a deeper look at that.
The funny thing is that today I am what I consider feminine: strong, confident, but still womanly. I still love sports and run an average of about twenty miles a week. I will voluntarily wear a skirt or a dress. Okay, so more often than not the skirts and dresses that I wear are black or brown, but they are present in my wardrobe. The completely ironic thing is that when I started having children, my mom dressed them in the cutest little black dresses. She doesn't buy them pink. I have a child that has hopped on the pink and black bandwagon, but other than that the other two don't wear pink.
I am just so glad that strength is in for femininity. Since that is the case, I'm not doing badly.
