#GirlsShitToo

"You're lucky to be a boy."

That evening, at the store, I continued to rant about Adree's ridiculous vlog and how I hated her perpetuation of ridiculous notions that certain careers were made for certain genders. "Isn't that ridiculous?" I said for the millionth time, to my mom, realizing my caffeine intake for the day was probably now at a dangerous level.

"Dallas, I think it's more complex than all that," Mom said. "It's not just about whether or not people feel like they have the ability to take on a certain career; it's also about how they'll be accepted in that career, and how they'll perform in that career. Remember when you had to have your first woman's appointment earlier this year, and you told me you just had to have a female doctor?"

Mom's gynecologist was male, and she'd chosen him because she "trusted a man more to deliver her baby safely." When she told me that, I nearly puked. She wanted me to use the same gyno since she already knew he took our medical insurance, but I refused. Mainly because I didn't want a dude touching my stuff. Not because I had some lesbian desire for a female gyno to do it (that's weird), but because no one had ever touched me down there. I'd even fought my mom about it, asking, "Do I have to go?" I didn't want my first contact to be with some old man who delivered my little brother. Or any man, for that matter. Luckily, I'd totally talked the female doctor I had chosen — Dr. Enriquez — out of giving me a pap smear; she just gave me the breast exam.

Was I being sexist when I insisted on having Dr. Enriquez? No way, I thought.

"Also," Mom continued, "we had to take Jace to see the male pediatrician at Crystal Shore Pediatrics last month, and he was so rough with him! He had staph infection, remember? And that doctor just pushed his finger into his open scab, and Jace started crying, and he didn't even care! I was really disturbed. Our regular pediatrician, Amy Devant—that's your friend's mom, right?—is so much more nurturing. She would never do something like that. That's why there's only one male pediatrician at Crystal Shore Pediatrics. Because most parents know that female pediatricians are better for our kiddos."

"Wow, mom, you're totally sexist!"

"Is it sexist if it's true?"

I spent the next four minutes struggling to come up with a response, and then was distracted by some lady coming over to the stroller and asking my mom, "What's her name?" about Jace. This happened a lot, because even though Jace often wore "masculine" superhero clothing, he had thick eyelashes and a head of what Mom called "adorable little angel ringlets," quite a feat for a six-month-old.

So Mom got all upset and said, pretty rudely, "He. is. a. boy!"

The poor woman stammered, "Sorry!" and slunk away.

"You had better watch your tone, lady," I told my mom.

"There was nothing wrong with my tone."

"Mom, you need to stop getting all hyphy when people call Jace a girl. It's really not that big of a deal. I don't understand why society wants us to think it's so offensive when people mistake our gender."

"Well, Dallas, I'm sure you would revel in being called a boy, but Jace is a boy. How do you think he'll feel when he's older and people call him a girl and he can actually understand them?"

"It will make him feel bad, but only because he'll have spent his infancy listening to you get offended about it. Besides, are you trying to say that boys are better than girls?" I didn't know why I was asking, because that was exactly what she was saying. Maybe I was hoping that she would retract her statement so I wouldn't have to feel so appalled by her.

"I'm just saying that girls can more easily act like boys than boys can act like girls. No boy wants to think he is girly...they want to be tough."

It was a good thing I loved her, because if I didn't, I might've smacked her. Instead, I went with condescension. "Like the 'tough' pediatrician?"

She glared at me, and I glared right back, trying to get her to see the faultiness of her logic: the logic that men should be tough, and pediatricians should be gentle, and therefore men shouldn't be pediatricians because they can't be tough and gentle at the same time. When she broke our eye connection, I said, "You drive me crazy. Girls are just as tough as boys if they want to be."

"You certainly are. You've been driving me crazy for eighteen years, sweetheart. But I'll miss you when you're gone." Her voice was on the verge of cracking with her acknowledgment that I would be moving out soon, and I looked away, wanting to run away from this emotional moment. She must have sensed my discomfort, because she changed the subject. "Ooh, look at this cute little shirt!" It was a shirt for Jace; it said, "Future Rocket Scientist." I frowned, then meandered over to the little girls' section to see if there was a similar shirt.

There wasn't.

I wished there was a "Future Rocket Scientist" shirt in the little girls' section. Maybe it would have been better if there was just a kids' clothing section, undivided by gender. But there wasn't, so I just rolled my eyes and whispered to Jace that he was lucky to be a boy.