#GirlsShitToo

What Little Girls Are Made Into

Dallas Delaney @DallasDelaney

New vlog is up! Check it out, and please participate in my poem challenge. Let's see what happens when we REMIX sugar + spice #WhatLittleGirlsAreMadeInto

What Little Girls Are Made Into

Published on January 24, 2015

Youtube Video Transcript:

I hope you all saw I retracted some of the things I said in my last vlog—namely, that nail polish sucks. I really don't think nail polish sucks. I think anyone should get to express themselves in whatever ways they see fit, without being judged for it. Can't we just celebrate our different ways of being? I'm sorry for not seeing it that way earlier.

That being said, I do think we can openly criticize the roles we are pushed into just because of our genders.

Remember the stupid poem we learned when we were kids? It goes:

Sugar and spice and everything nice/That's what little girls are made of.

Frogs and snails and puppy dog tails/That's what little boys are made of.

People were already trying to teach us how different we were. But truthfully, we weren't that different. When I was a little girl, I loved snails and frogs!

A lot of people nowadays agree that we aren't made of different stuff, we are made into different stuff as we grow. Same ingredients, different concoction. Little girls were marketed all the pink stuff, all the kitchen stuff, all the you're gonna be a mommy when you're older stuff. Boys, on the other hand, were marketed all the blue stuff, all the piece-me-together 'cause you're an engineer stuff, all the channel-your-aggression into your work and play stuff.

Girls were nurtured to think we didn't have good enough brains to do STEM things (you know, science, technology, engineering, and math things). Instead of fantasizing about awesome careers like little boys did, girls spent their childhoods fantasizing about dresses for various occasions and about how many children they would have and what they would cook them for dinner.

I'm going to remix that poem. Here goes:

Submissive and indecisive and overly concerned with the surface/That's what little girls are made into.

Dominant leaders, scientific thinkers, and aggressive fighters/That's what little boys are made into.

Sorry the syllable counts are off; I'm not much of a poet.

But at least my poetry is illuminating and not misleading! What do you guys think about making your own poems? Tweet your own recreated poem lines, and don't forget to use the hashtag #WhatLittleGirlsRMadeInto and/or #WhatLittleBoysRMadeInto

I look forward to reading your lines! I'll retweet some of the best!