Kasumi Hirokawa, PA, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent
When I was scrolling through my Facebook feed this afternoon, I saw a photograph of a plump baby boy innocently smiling at a sock monkey. But neither the smile nor the plush monkey caught my attention first. Not even the bright green frame that matched that shirt. It was his bright green shirt (or a onesie) that made me linger on the photo. The graphics of the shirt said: Lock Up Your Daughters.
I think it was meant to be cute. It was meant to be funny. It was meant to be a corny innuendo, with a dash of age-appropriate naughtiness only his older relatives are able to chuckle at. Only that, for me, it wasn’t any of those things. I was made uncomfortable. Because I knew the woman who posted the photo has a daughter who is in elementary school.
To me, the slogan screams: this boy will grow up to be a stud; tell your girls to shut their legs while I, as a parent of the irresistibly charming boy, will do nothing to prevent him from taking away the purity of your precious princesses.
That makes me fear what the baby’s shirt may teach the little girl and the little boy about themselves, what is expected of them and how they view others around them. Will the lesson be that it is the responsibility of parents who have daughters to police their sexuality? Are girls responsible for protecting their purity? Is confining girls’ movement the only solution for them not to be bothered? Is sex something men take away from women? Is a woman’s worth dependent on how many sexual advances she refuses before marriage? If she is not properly “lock[ed] up,” does she deserve anything bad happening to her?
Of course, I’m not saying the boy’s parents were to blame for dressing him in such a shirt. Sexism is so insidious yet pervasive, it is hard to catch. The saying goes that a fish doesn’t know that it is swimming in water.
Rearing a child is no easy task, let alone raising a future feminist in the society infected with misogyny. But I hope the sock monkey-loving baby boy will grow up to be a man who stands up for his sister, not because he thinks she should be locked up but he sees her as a human being whose rights are equally important as his own.
Kasumi is a recent graduate from Penn State with a BA in journalism. Her writing has been published in Valley Magazine, City Weekend Shanghai, Penn State GeoBlog and Shanghai Daily. You can follow her on Twitter, @kasumihrkw
