Fairies have superpowers too, dammit!

During snack time a few weeks back, a table of my students and I got into a discussion about superpowers (meaning superhuman abilities, not countries with international world influence). One of my students was celebrating her fifth birthday and had kindly brought pudding cups for everyone, and each chocolaty treat was accompanied by a Tinkerbell napkin.

courtesy of Disney via Easy Art

One of the boys at my table (while devouring his way through the pudding cup) said, "I hate Tinkerbell. She’s stupid. Superman's so much cooler." There were mumbles of agreement from the other boys at the table and general silence, but wide-eyed attention, from the girls. Six pairs of eyes turned to me. Waiting. I said something along the lines of, "I bet Tinkerbell and Superman know each other. I mean, they both have superpowers, and how many people do you know who can fly? I bet they hang out." (And in case the truth is in question: yes, I’m that teacher; you know, the one that says stuff like this on purpose with the intention of making kids think. Though sometimes it just makes them think I’m crazy…)

courtesy of DC Comics via Comic Book Collectors

For a short moment everything stopped. Everyone was quiet. But, you could see the kids’ minds kick into high gear, imaginations at work, processing and weighing the possibilities. It was as if each was asking him- or herself the question, "Is that possible? Could Superman and Tinkerbell actually know one another?! How would that work?!"

Then one boy (the one who had already declared his fairy-hate) said rather defiantly, "No way! They aren't even in the same show!" (Ah, media culture...)

I pushed my real point – "But they have the same superpower." There was a mumbling of discordant commentary. Finally I said, "Well, Tinkerbell flies, right? I mean flying is a superpower, right? So she has superpowers. The same superpower as Superman." My words were followed by a few seconds of tense, thoughtful silence. Then one of the girls responded, using the ‘sometimes we have to remind silly adults things that everybody knows’ voice. She said, "Fairies have 'special talents.'" She didn’t overtly add “And ‘special talents’ are NOT the same as superpowers” but that was the clear message. There were nods of agreement around the table. Another boy said, “And she doesn’t even have a real cape. Superman has a real cape. She doesn’t.” I replied, “She doesn’t have a cape at all. She has wings. And she flies.”

One of my students recently attached this image of herself
as a superhero to her Valentine to the class.  Yippee!

The intention of this back and forth conversation wasn’t (necessarily) about who was going to ‘win,’ but rather about trying to push the kids to think about language in a different way. I wanted them to notice the words that they take for granted, and – without overly naming it with fancy jargon – moving them to see the gendered connotations of the words they use and the consequences of those connotations. All of the children could agree that Superman and Tinkerbell can both fly. In this situation, being able to fly is gender neutral; the kids accept examples of both males and females who can absolutely, without question, fly (at least in their imaginations and in stories). But, because of the gender socialization they have received and continue to be taught, when I say that Tinkerbell has ‘superpowers’ (a word socially marked as strongly masculine), the children have a feeling of disjuncture that they seek to alleviate – which they do by pushing back – by denying Tinkerbell’s possession of ‘superpowers’ and/or renaming her abilities as ‘special talents,’ words socially marked with a feminine connotation.

On the surface, this may seem like an innocuous, passing conversation, but to dismiss its implications so casually would be a mistake. Let me offer two similarly ‘innocent’ examples from the past few weeks:

First, a student and I were reading a children’s book about visiting other countries. The characters in the story travel by plane. We had a conversation that went like this:

Me: Would you ever like to be an airplane pilot, to fly a plane?
Her: No. [A perfectly acceptable answer.]
Me: Why?
Her: Girls can’t fly airplanes.
Me: Why not?
Her: Only boys can fly planes.

Through further conversation, it became clear that there was nothing I could say to convince her that women can, and do, indeed fly planes.  She was firm in her belief that this was not an option open to her.  (In the moment, I was so frustrated that I didn’t have a photograph or illustration showing a female pilot, but you never have those things when you need them.)

And second, on one of the recent days it was too cold to go outside to play, my student were watching a video adaption of the book Antarctic Antics: A Book of Penguin Poems by Judy Sierra and illustrated by Jose Aruego and Ariane Dewey. In one of the first poems a baby emperor penguin hatches and says, "I'm really hatched./ At last I'm free./ Hey, Dad, it's me!" My students immediately said, “That’s not the baby’s dad. That’s it’s mom,” to which I explained that male emperor penguins sit on the eggs to keep them warm 'til they hatch, so the ‘Dad’ would be the first parent a baby would see, not the ‘Mom.’ The kids were confused and somewhat resistant. As the video continued the children started seeing each penguin and shouting out, “That’s a boy. That’s a girl” – trying to identify the gender of each bird, even though the illustrations depict all of the birds as nearly identical. My students would say things like, “It’s a girl. Hear the voice?” To them it was like a playful game. To me they seemed almost frenetic in their determination to assign gender to the characters on the screen before them. It seemed intolerable and unacceptable to just not know someone's gender identity.

In all three of these examples – Superman vs. Tinkerbell, the gender of airplane pilots, and penguin genders – my students, who are four and five, have very clear ideas about acceptable gender categories and strategies for categorizing people and animals into those divisions based on appearance, other physical markers (like voice), and/or behavior. But even more so, they have concrete concepts of power attached to those gender divisions. On the whole, my students believe that Tinkerbell can’t have superpowers because she’s a girl. Only men can be airplane pilots. And it is important to be able to ‘read’ what gender category any given person or character falls into (and to my students there are only two viable categories – boy or girl). The implications of this are frightening to me. In addition to telling girls that they can only look and behave certain ways and only take on certain interests or work, the boys are being given equally clear messages, which seem to have quite a lot to do with aggression, domination, superiority, and entitlement. At the end of the day, everyone is screwed. And no one is truly free.

When I ask parents what they want or hope for their child(ren), they typically say (especially if they’re white and generally middle class or above) that they want their children to be happy and that they want their children to believe that they can be anyone or anything that they want to be. There is nothing wrong with those hopes. But, when everything about our culture – from media to books and from our schools to the socialization that takes place in our own homes – teaches kids from birth (and often before) that they can be whoever or whatever they want but only as long as they abide by very specific gender-based rules and norms, how does that make the world a more equitable place for children of all genders? How does that foster an environment where girls truly can be anything or anyone and an atmosphere where boys don’t have to be super-masculine to get their gender 'right'?

This figurine is in our classroom's
collection of pirate/castle gear.  I adore
the unshaven, pink polka-dot look!

I don’t have my own children – which is probably a good thing because I think I would be the insane parent who no other parents would want to be around and no child would want to claim.  I would likely go on tirades against pretty, pink princesses, I’d tell boys its okay to cry, and I’d be totally intolerable about all the research that talks about the ways we do our kids major disservices. But even without kids of my own, I do spend a lot of time with other peoples’ children. (Often, more time than they do.)  And it’s fairly certain that I can’t singlehandedly change the course of how those kids think about (or don’t think about) gender and power issues related to gender. But I am in the position to push buttons, to instigate dialogue, and to challenge preconceived ideas. I’m able to ask my students, “Why do girls have 'talents' and boys have 'superpowers'?” And with adults I can offer a similar challenge: “Why are extraordinary abilities for female characters considered magical and used for things like making dewdrops and flowers and flitting daintily from blossom to blossom and being careful to stay out of the path of frightening humans? And why are extra-human capabilities for male characters considered outside the realm of magic (and more often contained in the realm of science) and such characters are fierce adventurers (as well as generally violent and destructive) who engage in battle, seek revenge, and expect admiration from the poor, weak populace? No, really, help a girl out. Why is it this way? I don't understand.  And is this what we want our kids to learn about gender?”

At the end of the day, I want the world to look different. I want my students to believe that they can be airplane pilots, even the girls. And I want my students to believe that fathers are fully qualified and capable of being nurturing primary caregivers. I want me students to believe that gender is complicated and putting people in boxes can be limiting to everyone. If we feel free to be merely who we are, that’s more than enough.

And I want my students to know that fairies have superpowers.