I am an only child. I am a girl. I have two parents who are loving, very supportive, and after 23 years of marriage are still as happy as they were the day they first met. I attending an all girl’s high school, where I wore a skirt and tights every day for 4 years, and loved it. With all of this in mind you might think I am quite a girly girl, but what is the definition of this, and furthermore what do the things I have told you have anything to do with being one? Well these things could all have a lot to do with what people in today’s society consider a girly girl. I however do not fit into that stereotype. I was the girl who played all the sports in school. I dressed in pants and boys shirts, in fact in terms of stereotypes I was what people call a tom boy. I think the only doll I ever had was a Barbie doll whose hair I shaved to make it look more like a boy. I have always been closer to my father then to my mother, my mother was a cheerleader her whole life, while I took my fathers path as the more jock athlete. I can remember always being friends with girls who dressed very girly but it never was appealing to me to dress like them. I think, howeve

Boys and girls by the age of four understand the difference between being a boy and being a girl, in fact in an article titled, “I’m a Boy and You’re a Girl!” in Early Childhood Today magazine it is stated that by the age of four many children prefer to play with their same sex peers and can be strongly influenced by and judgmental of playmates’ clothes, accessories, and toys. Because of this, their behavior might seem rigid even in dramatic play. Girls can clean house, but they can’t be soldiers. Boys can be train engineers but they can’t bake cookies—or carry a purse. (Early Childhood Today, 2002, p.30)

Children can learn a lot by watching their parents. I was raised mainly by my father, while my mother was always away on business trips, this could contribute a great deal to the reason I turned out so much like him. Children today can learn to cook from their mothers and throw a baseball from their fathers.

Children can also be affected by movies they watch, especially in movies that are targeted to their age group. Take Disney movies for example. The last Disney movie I watched was the recent Finding Nemo. This movie actually did a very good job of keeping the female and male characters the same. The only thing that would make me think that Dore, the main female fish, was a female was by her voice. There was one more aspect of the film that would have made me, as a 21 year old, believe, even if I had put the film on silent, that Dore was a girl and Marlin was a boy, the way they swam. Dore was always all over the screen flipping and spinning and winding in and out of the shot, whereas Marlin, Nemo’s father, was always just swimming straight. Dore would sing while she was swimming or hum, Marlin again, would just swim straight. I see this as a stereotype, however a child in the preschool years probably would not be able to see the difference, or realize the difference.

r that there are reasons for this. I think that television and the main stream media have a great deal of an effect on children today. I see less girls dressing like boys at a young age, and more girls who dress in skirts, dresses, and frilly clothing. I

Some topics in this essay:
Gender Roles, Marlin Nemo’s, Maclean’s Magazine, Girl” Childhood, Maddie Cinderella, Finding Nemo, girl character, children learn, boy character, age children, gender roles, preschool age children, character wearing, boys girls, father mother, girls playing, cartoon station, girl character wearing,