One day my uncle asked me to baby sit for him. Since his daughter happened to be my favourite cousin, I agreed most happily. Now this five year old lady is quite smart and is a wonderful companion. I’ll describe the day’s progress even by event.
Her first remark was my dress was quite inappropriate for a good girl and that I should always wear a churidar with a shawl. one has to look modest enough. She added that my dress looks pretty old too.
Then she wanted to dance. Not only did she want to dance, she wanted me to join her and went on to teach me some moves in classical dance. Now class X English workbook was the last time i went anywhere near an exercise and my body is really really far from flexible. Naturally i ended up a lousy pupil and she got disgusted with my dancing skills soon enough.
Then she noticed that i'm not wearing a bindi, i haven't painted my nails and my hair is not combed. So we march to the make up room where i went thru all these processes on both of us. I followed all her expert advice and ended up looking like ... looking like nothing that i can think of.
Luckily it was lunch time and for once she focused her attention on something other than food. This was followed by a session in tv room where we watched a lot of rhymes and singed and danced.
Thus ended my day of baby sitting. I love this little girl very much and I enjoyed her company very much and it was real amusing. But then why do we bring up our girls teaching them ways of decorating themselves right from infanthood? why does this little child have to be so full of notions of modesty and appropriateness and all that bull shit? why can't she be taught to wear clothes and carry herself the way that makes her feel comfortable? I think we need to give some thought to the way we bring up our girls, the way we help them form their thought process.
Were you baby sitting her or the other way round? ;)
ReplyDeleteBut jokes apart, what you say is true. Hopefully, as smart as she is, she will start questioning such practices once she's a bit older
Hehe.. Ithoke kochile ellarum padipikunnathalle.. Ennit valuthavumpo ithpole blog okke ezhuthi thodangum.. :-D
ReplyDeleteOne thing i can never understand is who could have coined the term 'baby sitting'.. Did someone really expect them to SIT somewhere quietly! ;-)
Lovely!!!
ReplyDeleteGirl..i would say you were lucky !!!!
See this, u will know how lucky u were
http://poomanam.blogspot.com/2006/04/sitting-ducks.html
When I was at home, one of our neighbours came with his two daughters. The elder one is quite 'feminine' while the younger one who is 3-4 years old has been brought up like a boy, I guess, coz the parents want a son and so it is okay for them if she behaves in supposedly "unfeminine" ways. I was thinking how much influence our socialisation plays in making us play these gender roles.
ReplyDeleteWell, may be you can try to influence your cousin positively (ahem ahem) in your next babysitting session. Iniyumorangathinu baalyamundo?:) I am sure she will unlearn most of these things when she grows up.