The other day, as Charlotte and I were grocery shopping in the local Fred Meyer, a woman at the checkout stand commented, “Ooooh, what’s his name?” Did she really just say his? “That is such a cute baby boy!” she continued. “How old is he?”
“She’s three months.”
“Oh.” Her brow furrowed. “I- I- er… Sorry. It’s just that, she’s wearing blue shoes.”
I looked down. My baby girl was dressed in a bright pink shirt and matching bright pink pants, with pink socks. And, light blue shoes.
Growing up, I was often confused as a boy. Judging by the photos (and painful memories) of my childhood, my mother clearly believed the perfect haircut was one in which the hair was cut straight along the edge of a bowl upturned on a child’s head. The Bowl Cut appears in all our family photo albums, beginning with my sister, continuing with my brother, and ending with me. This classic ‘do is what we might nowadays call a gender-neutral cut, and I attribute it to many of the uncomfortable moments in my childhood. “Aw…” grown-ups would often say as they ruffled my hair, “What’s your name little boy?”
It didn’t help to have a boy’s name. Rory only recently became more popular as girl’s name, thanks in large part to the cheeky and adorable Rory Gilmore of The Gilmore Girls. (That being said, my cousin recently named his son Rory, throwing me right back into the angst of my younger years.) In high school, college, and beyond, the most common response to my self-introduction has been, “I know a Rory! It’s a boy, though.” These people identified me as a female, despite having a boy’s name. As a young child with a unisex bowl cut, there was no such identification. “Rory? Ah, that’s a strong Irish name for a little boy!”
I tend to be someone who, when presented with an uncomfortable or stressful situation, stammers and backs down quickly. I often walk away from these situations and, several hours later, think of an ingenious response to that would surely have given me the situational win.
As it turns out, much of my adult life has been spent thinking of much-belated responses to those hair-ruffling, ego-killing adults. I also spend time thinking of gender-neutral baby-praising comments to use on any baby I might meet. Just like the old adage “Never ask a woman if she’s pregnant unless you see a baby coming out of her at that exact second,” I feel the need to never make mention a baby’s gender unless the baby is naked and proof of gender is present at that moment. “Your baby is so adorable!” “How old is your baby?” “What is your baby’s name?”
The only exception I will make is a baby dressed head-to-toe in pink, which seems like an obvious statement by the parent that the child is a girl.
As I stood in Fred Meyer, staring at this woman (who clearly lacked the brain connection that covered judgment), all of those hypothetical responses came flooding to my head. I thought of all the clever things I could say to her to defend my sweet little girl from being called a boy. But as I looked at Charlotte and decided between comebacks, it all seemed to fade away. And instead of letting the many years of anger come out, I looked up and smiled at the woman. “It’s okay,” I said, “She’s not worried about it.”
And neither am I.
