I stepped into a Mormon church today for the first time in almost two years.
(The last time was a Christmas Sacrament Meeting at my parents’ ward. My mother told me that my sister would be performing and “although sister would never say so” to me, she would be sad if I didn’t go to see her. I rolled my eyes at the passive-aggressive guilt tripping. I knew it was about church and not about my sister because she’d had a non-church performance a couple days before and my mom hadn’t made a peep. I asked my sister about her church performance and if she would like me to go. She said she didn’t care, it was a lame choir number, but she’d like me to go because it was a family event. I was conflicted but I ended up going.)
This trip was for a birthday party abuzz with the cackles and whines of three year old children. It was touted as a costume party, and although I guessed the “costume” part was for the kids, I am inured to social constraints where costumes are allowed, so I showed up in full pirate regalia. The only other adult in costume was the birthday boy’s dad (one of only two dads in attendance, by the way, except one from the bishopric who poked his nose in between meetings).
They took all the kids outside in the cold rain to sing happy birthday and light the three candles on the cupcake. I was pretty sure that was more of a health hazard than keeping all the kids warm indoors and blowing out the three tiny flames. But I lit a fire in my own kitchen this week, so it’s probably just as well if no one listens to my pyrochial advice.
But the bugaboo was the party favors. Frog toys for boys, necklaces for girls. One of the boys asked if he could have a necklace, and the mom host said, “no, the boys get frogs and the girls get necklaces.” I’m sure he won’t be scarred for life, and maybe I’m oversensitive, but I think it’s setting a trend that will reach into more important things in life. We see items and activities as belonging to one gender and we start to forget we can change that. Longer queues for women’s bathrooms — there are several social fixes to that! But we just lump it.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink he talks about how women weren’t in major symphony orchestras until fairly recently. Around the ’50s, the German symphony implemented a screened audition for the first time, because one of the applicants was related to a judge. The instrument was trombone. When they heard the last applicant, the conductor immediately jumped up and said “we want him!” But him was a her. (Turns out they wouldn’t have invited her if they’d known. In the invitation letter, they addressed her as “Herr” instead of “Frau”, but she thought it was a meaningless mistake.) The conductor was terribly upset and had a hard time taking back the elated praise he’d just given her when he couldn’t see her. They ended up taking her, but they demoted her as soon as possible and she had to take it to court. Now most serious symphonies have instituted screened auditions, and now suddenly women are filling orchestra chairs. This might seem far away from frogs and necklaces, and it is. It’s a greater victory by a huge magnitude to be rewarding female musicians by merit than to give a kid the “wrong” gendered toy if he asks. But it’s worth it to watch the little things we do that betray our mindset towards the bigger picture.