It occurs to me as I type in the title of this piece that I may generate hits from some fans of the singer Pink. Who seems like a perfectly nice person but isn’t the pink I’m talking about. On the other hand, I find it fortuitous to have the opportunity to declare “I like pink” to a few extra people, given how many have heard me viciously attack the color pink in the past.
Some context is necessary here.
Starting with my first pregnancy, I had a great fear of pink. Pink little girl outfits with ruffles and ribbons. Tiny pink bows that some mothers affix to bald baby heads in a frequently futile effort to make their androgynous babies look feminine. (“My sister put a pink bow on her daughter’s head,” a friend of mine once told me. “Strangers told her how cute her little boy was and asked why she put a pink bow on him.”) Shiny little Mary Janes with paired with pink socks, and sparkly pink princess clothes, and mounds of pink doll-like dresses that I was just certain strangers were waiting to buy for my child if only she turned out to be a girl.
Jake, of course, did not turn out to be a girl. But even before we found out he would be a boy, we warned our friends and family that the sex of our child would be strictly between me and Mike. Primarily because we thought it would be nice to have at least one aspect of the pregnancy a private matter between just the two of us. But, really, what a huge side benefit to know that if we did turn out to be having a girl she could remain free of others’ gender conventions for at least the time she spent in utero.
This time, not only did the rest of the world not know we were having a girl, but we didn’t either, having decided that we had already pondered all the big boy/girl decisions during my first pregnancy (to circumcise or not to circumcise? that is the question) and therefore didn’t need to know the baby’s sex ourselves. So no worries about the dreaded explosion of pink that I feared would bury both me and my girl baby in a sea of Strawberry Quick colored blankets and dresses.
This child, I thought proudly, would arrive in the world a clean slate, no expectations piled upon … um, her.
As soon as she was a “her,” the pink card showed up on her hospital bassinet. And I didn’t much care. Maybe I was already sliding down the slope to my first Lily purchase — the pink Old Navy tee-shirt with the ruffled sleeves and Lucy Toothy decal and the hot pink polka dot pants with the ruffled ankles.
They are far from the last pink items I have purchased. And even futher from the last ones I will ever buy.
Because, after opening gift upon gift of beautiful pink dresses with, yes, bows (but no ruffles), after oohing and ahhing like the most pink-addled of mothers, after thrilling at how girl-like my three-week-old looks in her pink clothes, it is time for me to admit it. I like pink.
It’s a Gender Thing
Despite what my mother might tell you, I did not keep the sex of my babies a secret simply to annoy people.
I truly did aim to give my children just a little bit of time to be purely who they were, to be free of the branding that comes with something as simple as sex. Little girls wear pink. We all know it, right? Except for the little girls themselves, who, at birth, haven’t a clue what pink is or what a girl is or pretty much what anything is except that warm body that smells like Mom.
And aren’t there plenty of little girls who shun pink? I’ve never been one of them myself, but I have nothing but respect and admiration for the tom boys in my life. And, frankly, one of the things I like about being on the girlie side is not importing all the stereotypical girlie stuff that comes with girlie-ness — being demure (I can hear Mike laughing hysterically at the very suggestion) or afraid of bugs (okay, cockroaches don’t count) or unable to operate a wallpaper steamer. I still think the best thing about being a lawyer for those few years of a law firm office and suits was clicking into a deposition in my high heels, sitting back, and just waiting for the moment when I could pull the rug out from under the always-sexist opposing counsel’s feet with a well placed sharp legal retort.
The whole heartfelt point of not liking pink was not to be difficult, not to deny my mother and mother-in-law the deep satisfaction of buying cute little girl clothes for their granddaughter. It was to give my daughter space to be whoever she wanted to be. To be the drummer sidekick who is revealed as the love of the cute guy’s life in the last minutes of Some Kind of Wonderful. To one day marry a woman. Or, if she chooses, to wear pink princess dresses and dream of the day she will get married to Prince Charming in a big, white wedding gown with a frothy veil.
Yes, I know which one will most likely be my girl. But I sincerely hope she gets to make the choice without pressure.
Maybe it’s a function of when I grew up — too young for the 1970’s wave of feminism that made it perfectly normal for me to choose to go to law school twenty years later (and be honestly shocked to discover that my law school class was only one-third women) but old enough to enter a workforce where the top bosses were still almost all men and Justice O’Connor was — as she once put it in a talk I attended — lonely. Bracketed between the women who had to fight and the women who don’t know what the fight is about, I saw one of my roles as a mother as doing the fighting that would make it possible for my daughter to not know there was anything to fight over. If that makes sense.
I fear it does not.
And maybe it doesn’t require explanation. Maybe every parent and every person roughly my age understands implicitly what I’m trying to say. Whether it’s about gender conventions or class expectations or any other edict we feel has been imposed upon us against our will, we all get the idea that we would like to spare a person we love the same battering. As a mother, especially of young children, I get to fantasize that my children will grow up with a healthy sense of themselves and with the freedom to be whoever they choose.
Who wouldn’t want that chance? And who, as an adult, truly feels they have had it?
Why My Gender-Free Desire Is Both Yoga and Not Yoga
While I can’t quite attribute these ideas to my yoga practice, they certainly fit right into it.
Isn’t yoga, after all, about freeing ourselves from expectations — society’s and our own? About letting go of this mental picture we have of who we are and what we are supposed to be? About living genuinely, gracefully, in the moment?
I’m just trying to give my children a head start in such a centered approach to life.
At the same time, I have to confront my own recent on-line frenzies of purchasing cute little girl clothes, of holding up pink dresses against my infant daughter and moaning about how I can’t wait until she’s old enough to wear them. Of dreaming of the day Lily is Jake’s age and seeing a little girl in pig tails and pink sparkly shoes, cute as can be. Even though I’ll love her if she still looks kind of like a boy two years from now.
I don’t feel guilty for falling prey to the gender conventions I so staunchly rejected before I had a daughter. Nor even for happily dressing her in pink until she’s old enough to have an opinion of her own. I started once to tell myself I should be. And that’s when I realized that forcing myself to reject what I enjoyed wasn’t very yoga-like of me.
Because yoga is also about letting go of the struggle. About doing what feels right and genuine. It seems kind of silly to say pink little girl clothes feel “right and genuine.” But there you have it. They do.
It is, I’ve come to understand, the key to the struggle I’ve had with the idea that in yoga you let go of the self you’ve created in your mind’s eye. I haven’t wanted to let go of that person because I quite like her. Especially since she started practicing yoga.
But now I can see more clearly: I’m not supposed to let go of her. I’m supposed to let go of the things my mind tells me that woman is supposed to do. For example, my mind says a good mother is supposed to forgo all paying work until her daughter is, say, walking. But I feel every bit the good mother having completed a paid assignment this week. And I felt just as good about my mothering when I sent the head of Jake’s daycare an email asking just when there would be an opening for Lily, the sooner the better.
The difference is that I am able to feel what is right for me and my child when I let go of what I think is right. It has come to me in large part just with having the second. With Jake I set out with a notion of the mother I would be. And pretty much succumbed to craziness in his first year, to a total loss of the very self I thought I was being true to.
Now that I know what motherhood is, sort of, in a little way, about, I finally understand the edict that, “I’m right because I’m the mommy.” I get to go with my Mommy instinct. No one else gets to question it. And, as a YogaMamaMe, I don’t have to question it either. I don’t have to create a Mommy in my mind’s eye and be her — any more than I have to create a Melissa in my mind’s eye that I am supposed to step into, like plastic being poured into a Barbie doll mold.
Yoga, I can now see, isn’t about not having a self. It’s about having a genuine self, one you don’t have to constantly step back to take a peek at, one you don’t need others to confirm. It’s about being a self you feel good inside, stepping confidently forward in, feeling free to change and grow and make choices and live with.
And, yes, if it happens, even being a self who clothes her daughter in cute pink little girl dresses.
Nadi Shodhana (Alternate Nostril Breathing) — Balancing It Out
Nadi Shodhana, or alternate nostril breathing, is a sort of all-around, cure-what-ails you pranayama exercise. The purpose is to open the two major shushumnas, or energy channels, in the body. The ida shushumna runs up the left side of the spine. It is considered feminine, and cooling. The pingala shushumna runs up the right side of the spine. It is considered masculine, and heating. The point of nadi shodhana is to balance these two sides, hot and cold, masculine and feminine.
Which, I suppose, explains why I offer the exercise here. That balance is what allows us to let go a bit — to not feel unsure about what our mind is telling us we should be and what is coming from our hearts. Nadi shodhana can balance heart and mind in a way that allows you to honor both.
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I just started shaving my legs for the first time in almost 3 years. As I embarked on a trip to Raleigh for work, I opted to shave because I was going to be in a position of Authority in the Bath Junkie Raleigh store, and considering I work for a pretty girl-catered company, I thought it would allow me to feel more comfortable without having to hide my Asheville-ness or my whatever. I didn’t want to explain myself, because, when asked for an explanation in the past, although I usually volunteered a “because I was in a long relationship and didn’t have to” or a “why shave?” response, it was mostly due to the fact that it never occurred to me that people might think it was strange.
In Raleigh, it’s strange.
and you know what I found? When, after work one night, I put on an emerald green satin dress and heels and went to a bar downtown, I felt like a woman. All this time I had been trained by my non-conformist mother that I could be feminine without shaving or wearing pink, and by my anti-establishment personality of always doing the opposite of what was expected of me, I actually enjoyed the feeling of walking down Blount street in my heels and knowing that I could be seen as just a normal girl, even though I know I’m far from it.
I guess the point is, it’s OK either way. I can go unshaven if thats what I want, though it was mostly just laziness not to, or shave or wear pink or dresses and not be seen as any less independent or strong.
I probably won’t take to wearing pink any time soon, but the legs I’ll keep. Cause I realized that I’m pretty hot in heels.
so thanks, pretty good timing on this post for me. ; )
how are you by the way?
holler, I’d love to meet your littlest addition!
And you were plenty feminine in your unshaven, contrary state as well.
I, too, enjoy the occasional dress-up party — high heels, maybe even stockings, real make-up and flattering lighting. And then I realize that high heels just plain aren’t comfortable and that I feel equally feminine walking out of yoga class with my hair in a ponytail, my feet in flip flops, and a tee-shirt pulled over my sweaty yoga clothes.
Lydia and I are doing well, and she’s starting to have her eyes open up frequently enough to have pictures taken by … Lydia.
Meanwhile, thanks for the comments. Back from Raleigh?
Um, Melissa, I think flattering lighting follows you wherever you go.
And yes, I actually think post yoga sweaty daziness is one of the sexiest and most feminine states for any woman.
Back from Raleigh, yes, though possibly.. moving there?
and you know I did the heels thing again the other night just for kicks (pun intended) and remembered the fleeting thrill is not worth the sore-ass feet for hours afterward, that is, unless I get to make out with someone..
which I did. but not because of the heels at all. That one was all thanks to my sexiest and always trusty companion, the camera.
By the way, it tickles me that there’s a yet unmet baby out there with my name.
I don’t think that I’ve ever met a baby with my name so close to birth, it’ll be a strange and luminous thing to meet her, and I know she’ll be the only one she knows for a loooong time. Which is splendid and wonderful to not be another Rachel or Sarah or Jennifer (the repeats of my generation for sure) so that the teachers have to sit them on opposite sides of the room to keep them straight.
yay for Lydias.
and yay for Mommys.
p.s. you know, we don’t have to take pictures to hang out. If you’d like some company or just a no-caff-soy-latte or tofutti cuties delivered, just say the word.
Lydia shall meet Lydia soon, soon, soon — san camera if necessary. I’m just in my first week without visitors & catching up on life, but planning on more outings soon, so you shall be on the list.
High heels always put me in the mind of the many dressed-up, too-much-alcohol nights when I ended up walking barefoot in some inappropriate place. The worst was New Years Eve in New York. My boyfriend and I took the train to Hoboken, where he lived, and he and his roommate had to walk two miles to where his car was parked by his apartment then drive back to the train station to pick me up b/c I couldn’t put my shoes back on but also couldn’t walk barefoot on the icy winter sidewalks. Was it worth it? Well, that boyfriend is not my husband, so you decide. I like your barometer better — making out in sexy heels with sexier camera near at hand. Very nice reason to feel good about a possible move to Raleigh.
I must say, whenever I say Lydia’s name, I like it even more. And others just love it. As you likely know.
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