My mom was of the generation that kept those big brown albums with black construction paper- like pages, wherein one secured snapshots within four triangular wedges, that held a family's fleeting black and white moments in memoriam, ordered and fastened in cedar chest scented honor. My younger sister V. and I sometimes nestled down in the alcove to the left of the stairs that led to our bedroom and sorted through the copious treasures our mom had carefully cached in tissue wrap, brittle boxes, and elastic banded bundles.
Her cedar chest was of a simple design, unetched, unscrolled, uncarved, and modern, I suppose, in its honeyed tint, the color of sweetened condensed milk. As we unfolded her wedding gown to admire and stroke the fabric, I was dreamily suspended in simultaneous revery of the woman who had worn the silken confection and the unformed image of the woman I knew time must surely make me.
We liked to reread the annual Christmas lists our mother recorded in her neat, elongated script for her two daughters and tow-headed son, her middle child. Perhaps she kept these inventories, written on whatever stationery was at hand, to help with thank you notes, or perhaps it was an impulse of her grateful nature. The greeting cards and postcards were of a particular fascination to me. Sometimes in an antique store I'll see a stack of their like and be struck by the charming, unsophisticated insouciance of the art and the genuine sentiment of the verse.
The photo album and its contents excited our deepest curiosities. There was our mom, long and lean, in her rolled up jeans and crisply tucked in shirt, with our broad shouldered, apple cheeked dad. They were as elegant and handsome a couple, with their broad grins and abundant hair as that era's Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood. My brother S. always seemed to have some boy prop of that decade in hand and an expression that promised more menace than Dennis. I was often photographed in a dress with a peter pan collar; my hair was braided, my bangs slightly askew, thanks to Dad the amateur barber, and I often held a doll.
My favorite photograph is of my little sister V. Her brunette hair is pixie style, but in all probability uncombed. This is the sort of bitty girl who flies down the stairs before the sleepy seeds are rubbed away, tips the cereal box over her bowl, tilts the milk in the bowl's general vicinity, ladles the sugary grains to mouth, and hurries, preferably unwashed, for the door and outside adventure. She's in a rumpled sweatshirt and jeans in this picture which perfectly encapsulates her childhood. Her feet are firmly planted on the knoll in the back of our home from whence my Mom could view us through the window over her kitchen sink. Behind her are acres of woods, then unpopulated by neighbors. Before her is a new day: there are swings to be swung, lawns to be traipsed, dirt to be dug. Look out snakes and snails and puppy dog tails - this is a girl with a plan.
That elfin child has her Masters of Library Science and with her husband D, an engineer, left the Pine Tree State for the piny woods of North Carolina some twenty years ago. She is a chic, immaculate woman, well travelled and well dressed. She gets her nails dirty in the garden, but has learned to appreciate soap and water. She loves mysteries, Walt Disney World Resort, golf, their dogs, shrimp and grits, pimento cheese, a bevy of off spring of family and friends, Charleston, S.C., and an occasional Isamax whoopie pie, traditional chocolate if you please.
I thought of my sister V. and her tomboy childhood recently when reading an interview with Angelina Jolie by Rich Cohen in the August 2010 issue of Vanity Fair magazine. Although she is ostensibly promoting her new movie Salt, Jolie graciously responds to the reporter's queries regarding the recent outfits and newly and closely cropped hair of her four year old daughter, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt. The ebullient miss, whose dad is actor Brad Pitt, likes, according to her mom, " ... to dress like a boy..." "She thinks she's one of the brothers. " states Jolie with what I hope and suspect is a loving, calm, sensible forbearance.
I'm not worried about Shiloh at all. My sister, when about four, claimed she would marry our brother and live in a little camp on the crossroad near our home. My daughter in late toddler hood wouldn't keep her clothes on. I have pictures of her at my Mom's bounty laden Thanksgiving table in her panties, her nice outfit discarded somewhere between arrival and the appetizers. One of my favorite cousins used to rise early as a little pre-schooler, swathe herself in an array of finery to rival a technicolor gypsy, and saunter across the lawn for a morning chat with her elderly and very tickled neighbors.
A little girl needs to express herself. Shiloh's hats, blazers, sweaters, jackets and locks have been discussed, analyzed, and magnified by journalists, panelists, bloggers, columnists, etc. with a scrutiny that implies concern for her gender identity, but is really more speculation and latent criticism about and of her celebrity parents.
Clothes can reflect individualism, but they do not dictate, enhance, or limit self expression. Joan of Arc was probably wearing the simple garb of a French jeune fille of the country side when she suffered the vision that would guide and empower her to lead a liberating army. When she cut her hair and donned armor it was for safety reasons, yet no clothing choice could spare her from betrayal and fire. Joan's finery was unrelated to fabric; hardened soldiers and privileged nobility responded to her pure spirit, acute intellect, and obedient heart.
I don't know what little Shiloh is working out by her current preference for boy togs, but the less that is made and said about it to her... the better for her. The choices girls make in wardrobe selection as children, and that's if they have choices, do not always reflect their future sartorial splendor or lack thereof. Childhood clothing is certainly not a precursor to future education, profession, exploits or adventure, but rather a consequence of culture, faith, income, climate, and even natural resources.
Margaret Talbot in the February 2003 edition of National Geographic magazine details the expedient rescue of instruments and papers vital to the success and posterity of the Lewis and Clark expedition. As the surveyors, 300 feet distant, watched helplessly from ashore, one of their boats began to capsize. The frightened helmsman would not heed their pleas for the rescue of their supplies and written records. Their Lemhi Shosone guide, called in various texts, Sacajawea (boat pusher) or Sacagawea (bird woman), acted quickly and somehow retrieved the soggy items. Lewis extolled her " fortitude and resolution" in his journals.
If the young wife and mother held to her tribe's traditional dress, she was in a deerskin shift with wide sleeves and her feet were in tanned leather moccasins. Captured as a girl by a war party of Hidatsa, Sacajawea/Sacagawea may have adopted some of their clothing customs. She may also have supplemented her wardrobe with pieces from a trading post; she was wedded as a teenager to a trapper who was also
the reluctant helmsman. Whatever she donned that fortuitous day, it was her inner core, not her outer coverings that preserved the raw materials of the Lewis and Clark journey. She could not have responded any more valorously in a wetsuit.
As parents and guardians we have an inherent right and duty to impose a code of respect and regimen of cleanliness and modesty that reflects to a degree our family values and social mores. We mine for mental fool's gold if we trust the thin armor of fabric to ensure their automatic safety and acceptance. Let your little girl wear her tutu for three days straight to nursery school, or her brother's hand me down hoodie with the hole in the pocket; braid her hair if she asks, or cut it if she pleads. Use the ribbons...toss the ribbons, use your head; toss your mental image of Mother Goose's sugar and spice and everything nice prototype. Your baby girl may not be what you expected, but she's just what you wanted...and needed. The world and it's inevitable demands and limitations will close in soon enough.
In 1960 a six year old girl named Ruby Bridges taught the citizens of New Orleans what girl power really looks like as she strode to a formerly segregated school. As interpreted by Norman Rockwell's 1964 cover illustration for Look magazine, Ruby, her hair in neat pig tails strides with preternatural grit past a wall stained with vile graffiti and the smeared remains of a spitefully flung tomato missile. Ruby, flanked by four federal marshalls in gray, brown, or beige suits, each with a yellow arm band, is spotlessly attired in white: dress, hair ribbons, socks, and sneakers. We do not see the marshalls heads; they seem purposeful and yet somehow vulnerable in their matching marches. Ruby's courage is apparent in the assailable space between her and the two men who front her and the two men who have her back. I've seen news photographs of Ruby that day in a plaid dress, but Rockwell's point is made. Ruby is what the scripture calls "good and pure and lovely".
We can not be certain what Cleopatra wore as she played in the courts of Egypt as a child. We have no clear idea of what articles of clothing were available to a small Sojourner Truth. Historians and common sense provide clues, but we remember them and other strong women of history for their backbone, vision, influence and courage, however different their destinies. Queen Cleopatra, for a while, bested Rome. Abolitionist and former slave Soujourner Truth ( her efforts are literally embodied by the young man who occupies our oval office ) bested, for a while, cruel bigotry.
Male and female, rich and poor, young and old, we can be hostages to history. Or we can raise a defiant fist on high, raise our standard, blow a bugle call, and take history, at least our personal history, hostage. Shiloh and all of our girls need our support, patience, and understanding as they wage the epic struggle for individuality. Kermit the frog bemoaned in song that it was "...not easy being green...". In the American classroom, on the American street it is not easy being female.
It is ever so much worse in a Bangkok brothel, a Darfurian refugee camp, the African Congo, or inside the walls of seemingly respectable homes and institutions in any country on planet earth. Eve and her sisters, the famous, the anonymous; the renowned, the notorious; the beloved and despised; trod the woman's walk in their era and their time. I wish for Shiloh Jolie-Pitt what I wish for my daughter, my nieces, our Russian exchange student angel, and all the girls around the globe: love, learning, faith and hope; shelter, food, clean water, and friends; compassion, grace, mercy, an education, and the safety to dream their dreams.
Her cedar chest was of a simple design, unetched, unscrolled, uncarved, and modern, I suppose, in its honeyed tint, the color of sweetened condensed milk. As we unfolded her wedding gown to admire and stroke the fabric, I was dreamily suspended in simultaneous revery of the woman who had worn the silken confection and the unformed image of the woman I knew time must surely make me.
We liked to reread the annual Christmas lists our mother recorded in her neat, elongated script for her two daughters and tow-headed son, her middle child. Perhaps she kept these inventories, written on whatever stationery was at hand, to help with thank you notes, or perhaps it was an impulse of her grateful nature. The greeting cards and postcards were of a particular fascination to me. Sometimes in an antique store I'll see a stack of their like and be struck by the charming, unsophisticated insouciance of the art and the genuine sentiment of the verse.
The photo album and its contents excited our deepest curiosities. There was our mom, long and lean, in her rolled up jeans and crisply tucked in shirt, with our broad shouldered, apple cheeked dad. They were as elegant and handsome a couple, with their broad grins and abundant hair as that era's Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood. My brother S. always seemed to have some boy prop of that decade in hand and an expression that promised more menace than Dennis. I was often photographed in a dress with a peter pan collar; my hair was braided, my bangs slightly askew, thanks to Dad the amateur barber, and I often held a doll.
My favorite photograph is of my little sister V. Her brunette hair is pixie style, but in all probability uncombed. This is the sort of bitty girl who flies down the stairs before the sleepy seeds are rubbed away, tips the cereal box over her bowl, tilts the milk in the bowl's general vicinity, ladles the sugary grains to mouth, and hurries, preferably unwashed, for the door and outside adventure. She's in a rumpled sweatshirt and jeans in this picture which perfectly encapsulates her childhood. Her feet are firmly planted on the knoll in the back of our home from whence my Mom could view us through the window over her kitchen sink. Behind her are acres of woods, then unpopulated by neighbors. Before her is a new day: there are swings to be swung, lawns to be traipsed, dirt to be dug. Look out snakes and snails and puppy dog tails - this is a girl with a plan.
That elfin child has her Masters of Library Science and with her husband D, an engineer, left the Pine Tree State for the piny woods of North Carolina some twenty years ago. She is a chic, immaculate woman, well travelled and well dressed. She gets her nails dirty in the garden, but has learned to appreciate soap and water. She loves mysteries, Walt Disney World Resort, golf, their dogs, shrimp and grits, pimento cheese, a bevy of off spring of family and friends, Charleston, S.C., and an occasional Isamax whoopie pie, traditional chocolate if you please.
I thought of my sister V. and her tomboy childhood recently when reading an interview with Angelina Jolie by Rich Cohen in the August 2010 issue of Vanity Fair magazine. Although she is ostensibly promoting her new movie Salt, Jolie graciously responds to the reporter's queries regarding the recent outfits and newly and closely cropped hair of her four year old daughter, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt. The ebullient miss, whose dad is actor Brad Pitt, likes, according to her mom, " ... to dress like a boy..." "She thinks she's one of the brothers. " states Jolie with what I hope and suspect is a loving, calm, sensible forbearance.
I'm not worried about Shiloh at all. My sister, when about four, claimed she would marry our brother and live in a little camp on the crossroad near our home. My daughter in late toddler hood wouldn't keep her clothes on. I have pictures of her at my Mom's bounty laden Thanksgiving table in her panties, her nice outfit discarded somewhere between arrival and the appetizers. One of my favorite cousins used to rise early as a little pre-schooler, swathe herself in an array of finery to rival a technicolor gypsy, and saunter across the lawn for a morning chat with her elderly and very tickled neighbors.
A little girl needs to express herself. Shiloh's hats, blazers, sweaters, jackets and locks have been discussed, analyzed, and magnified by journalists, panelists, bloggers, columnists, etc. with a scrutiny that implies concern for her gender identity, but is really more speculation and latent criticism about and of her celebrity parents.
Clothes can reflect individualism, but they do not dictate, enhance, or limit self expression. Joan of Arc was probably wearing the simple garb of a French jeune fille of the country side when she suffered the vision that would guide and empower her to lead a liberating army. When she cut her hair and donned armor it was for safety reasons, yet no clothing choice could spare her from betrayal and fire. Joan's finery was unrelated to fabric; hardened soldiers and privileged nobility responded to her pure spirit, acute intellect, and obedient heart.
I don't know what little Shiloh is working out by her current preference for boy togs, but the less that is made and said about it to her... the better for her. The choices girls make in wardrobe selection as children, and that's if they have choices, do not always reflect their future sartorial splendor or lack thereof. Childhood clothing is certainly not a precursor to future education, profession, exploits or adventure, but rather a consequence of culture, faith, income, climate, and even natural resources.
Margaret Talbot in the February 2003 edition of National Geographic magazine details the expedient rescue of instruments and papers vital to the success and posterity of the Lewis and Clark expedition. As the surveyors, 300 feet distant, watched helplessly from ashore, one of their boats began to capsize. The frightened helmsman would not heed their pleas for the rescue of their supplies and written records. Their Lemhi Shosone guide, called in various texts, Sacajawea (boat pusher) or Sacagawea (bird woman), acted quickly and somehow retrieved the soggy items. Lewis extolled her " fortitude and resolution" in his journals.
If the young wife and mother held to her tribe's traditional dress, she was in a deerskin shift with wide sleeves and her feet were in tanned leather moccasins. Captured as a girl by a war party of Hidatsa, Sacajawea/Sacagawea may have adopted some of their clothing customs. She may also have supplemented her wardrobe with pieces from a trading post; she was wedded as a teenager to a trapper who was also
the reluctant helmsman. Whatever she donned that fortuitous day, it was her inner core, not her outer coverings that preserved the raw materials of the Lewis and Clark journey. She could not have responded any more valorously in a wetsuit.As parents and guardians we have an inherent right and duty to impose a code of respect and regimen of cleanliness and modesty that reflects to a degree our family values and social mores. We mine for mental fool's gold if we trust the thin armor of fabric to ensure their automatic safety and acceptance. Let your little girl wear her tutu for three days straight to nursery school, or her brother's hand me down hoodie with the hole in the pocket; braid her hair if she asks, or cut it if she pleads. Use the ribbons...toss the ribbons, use your head; toss your mental image of Mother Goose's sugar and spice and everything nice prototype. Your baby girl may not be what you expected, but she's just what you wanted...and needed. The world and it's inevitable demands and limitations will close in soon enough.
In 1960 a six year old girl named Ruby Bridges taught the citizens of New Orleans what girl power really looks like as she strode to a formerly segregated school. As interpreted by Norman Rockwell's 1964 cover illustration for Look magazine, Ruby, her hair in neat pig tails strides with preternatural grit past a wall stained with vile graffiti and the smeared remains of a spitefully flung tomato missile. Ruby, flanked by four federal marshalls in gray, brown, or beige suits, each with a yellow arm band, is spotlessly attired in white: dress, hair ribbons, socks, and sneakers. We do not see the marshalls heads; they seem purposeful and yet somehow vulnerable in their matching marches. Ruby's courage is apparent in the assailable space between her and the two men who front her and the two men who have her back. I've seen news photographs of Ruby that day in a plaid dress, but Rockwell's point is made. Ruby is what the scripture calls "good and pure and lovely".
We can not be certain what Cleopatra wore as she played in the courts of Egypt as a child. We have no clear idea of what articles of clothing were available to a small Sojourner Truth. Historians and common sense provide clues, but we remember them and other strong women of history for their backbone, vision, influence and courage, however different their destinies. Queen Cleopatra, for a while, bested Rome. Abolitionist and former slave Soujourner Truth ( her efforts are literally embodied by the young man who occupies our oval office ) bested, for a while, cruel bigotry.
Male and female, rich and poor, young and old, we can be hostages to history. Or we can raise a defiant fist on high, raise our standard, blow a bugle call, and take history, at least our personal history, hostage. Shiloh and all of our girls need our support, patience, and understanding as they wage the epic struggle for individuality. Kermit the frog bemoaned in song that it was "...not easy being green...". In the American classroom, on the American street it is not easy being female.
It is ever so much worse in a Bangkok brothel, a Darfurian refugee camp, the African Congo, or inside the walls of seemingly respectable homes and institutions in any country on planet earth. Eve and her sisters, the famous, the anonymous; the renowned, the notorious; the beloved and despised; trod the woman's walk in their era and their time. I wish for Shiloh Jolie-Pitt what I wish for my daughter, my nieces, our Russian exchange student angel, and all the girls around the globe: love, learning, faith and hope; shelter, food, clean water, and friends; compassion, grace, mercy, an education, and the safety to dream their dreams.
