When Mayu and I learned we were going to have a baby girl, we were each overcome with a distinct flurry of emotions. Mayu’s response, expressed in Japanese, her language of preference, was “Doshio,” which means roughly, “What am I going to do?” It wasn’t a case of first baby jitters. We already had one, a boy we had named Leo, who was coming up on five years. No, her feelings about becoming the mother of a girl had to do with her personal history, growing up in 1970s and ‘80s South Korea without a mother and being raised by older female relatives who, judging by her stories, didn’t know what to do with a girl. They got angry when she showed an interest in shoes, makeup, pretty dresses, and other typically female things. An uncle once slapped her for wearing lipstick. Even lip gloss was suspect when teachers saw it on a female student. Hair and skirt length were inspected daily, and any gesture toward womanhood was censured and suppressed.
“They were terrible,” she said. “What if I do the same thing?”
Of course she is not doing the same thing with our daughter, Tess, who recently turned five herself. If anything, she is the epitome of motherhood. She bathes Tess every evening, blow-drying her hair and rubbing lotion on her body. She keeps Tess outfitted in the girlish, pink-heavy clothes that Tess has always preferred. She prepares Tess’s favorite foods, which happily include fruits and vegetables—not the case with Leo, who likes only white, yellow, and brown food (pizza sauce being the height of his gustatory adventurousness).
Mayu has gone out of her way to give Tess the girlhood that she herself never had. The conditions of Tess’s life are ideal for parental lavishment. Both of her parents are alive, for one, and both attentive. And my job brings in enough so that Mayu, for now anyway, can be home with the kids. We’re not wealthy, but there’s occasionally extra money for a pair of glittery shoes, a Barbie doll, a new sundress. And we live in the United States, where girls are not considered consolation prizes, as they are in some countries, and where women can be anything they want (though still not without an inequitable share of challenges). All said, it’s a good place and time to be a girl.
My feelings about having a daughter have not been as complicated as Mayu’s, understandably. I’m a man. I don’t have memories of growing up as a girl, of being treated unfairly (or worse) as a woman, of watching as power stays mostly in the hands of men. As Tess gets older, I imagine such reflections will take up more and more of her thoughts. And I pray nothing more than the usual human suffering befalls her. At present, however, all I see is a beautiful, inexpressibly cute girl. At five years, Leo was cute, too. Like Tess, he had round apple cheeks, a rambunctious laugh, pretty eyes, a penchant for hamming it up for the camera. He’s still cute, but as shades of teenage boy emerge, the cuteness is harder to see, especially for a father. These days I see too much of myself in Leo—the worst parts, I mean—to feel the tender sort of motherly love that perhaps Mayu is able to feel more naturally.
With Tess, the tenderness comes more easily. This is due in part to Tess’s personality. She is endlessly asking for hugs, or sidling up to cuddle, or saying things like, “I love you, Daddy,” and “I’m always going to live with you and I’m never going to let you go.” I realize children pass through alternating phases—I need you . . . I don’t need you . . . I love you . . . I hate you . . . The current Tess may be on the more needy, more loving, more emotional end of the pendulum. Then again, these heartfelt effusions could spring from the source of her character.
But I wonder if I’m partly responsible for the affection Tess showers me with. Is it possible the way I smile at her, the way my eyes light up when I see her, the affection in my voice when I address her, the readiness of my hands to rub her back and take her into my arms—is Tess mirroring some feeling I broadcast in her direction every day? And, like one of those stereotypical movie fathers, where there’s a younger daughter and pre-teen son, am I showing my softer side more to the girl than to the boy? Am I falling into some ancient cultural pattern—or is it biological?—in which boys turn against their fathers and girls fall in love with them?
I have to remember Leo is ten, a teenager in the making, and Tess only five. Leo would rather play video games than act out imaginary scenarios with me (a bike ride around the block is all we do together these days); whereas Tess, still dependent on Mom and Dad for so much—getting a snack from the top cupboard, brushing her teeth and wiping her butt properly, bathing, drying her hair, buckling herself into the car seat—in contrast to her brother, Tess still sees me and Mayu as potential and usually enjoyable playmates.
Playing with Tess can be interesting. Like her brother at the same age, she likes reenacting scenes from movies and TV shows. Sometimes, usually for a superhero narrative, she opts to play a male role, giving me a female character to round things out. I’ve been Wonder Woman, Elsa the ice queen, the witch from Snow White, Killer Frost from The FlashTV series, Supergirl, Supergirl’s stepsister, Elsa the ice queen’s sister Anna, and other minor characters according to Tess’s casting needs. Being a troupe of only two, we have to be flexible and resourceful actors.
Having gone through something similar with Leo, and being a natural ham, I take well to such theatrics. The notable difference with Tess is the multi-gendered aspect of our play-acting. In a way that seems characteristically feminine, she seizes every opportunity to incorporate romantic elements, with me most often playing the dashing male role. I’ve rescued her from villains, carrying her injured body in my arms. I’ve wakened her from eternal slumber with a modest, cheek-focused kiss. We’ve been married, on several occasions, by Louie the monkey (the only ordained stuffed animal in the house). We’ve had children together, some delivered by Dr. William the rabbit, right in front of me, from her bulging pajama top. We’ve enjoyed candle-lit dinners, weekend road trips, ballroom dances, shopping excursions—activities I’ve done in real life with actual romantic partners.
Tess isn’t all sentimental connection. She goes in for a rousing sword fight as much as any boy, and she can sit with Leo through interminable—sorry, my opinion—online videos of tousled gamers narrating their navigation of mazes teeming with robot bunnies and zombie pigs. She also wields her voice in ways that could not be described as “ladylike.” And yet, in her childlike obliviousness to contradictions, she is enchanted by femininity. From the moment she could indicate a preference for one thing over another, she has been drawn to pink over navy, flowers over stripes, ponies over dinosaurs, cute over scary, Barbie dolls over alien warriors, teenybopper pop stars over quirky, hyper boy acts (her brother’s favorites). Though Mayu and I have encouraged these proclivities by acquiring more pink, flowery, cute, and overall girlish things, Tess exhibits not the least ambivalence or hesitation when presented with them. Indeed, it all appears to come as naturally to her as breathing. She dons a ballet tutu as if it were a simple T-shirt, and seems inherently to know how to use it, twirling on one foot, the skirt fanning out like blurred daisy petals. From the earliest age she has found pleasure in striking exaggeratedly sexy poses (vaguely disturbing for a parent to see in a three-year-old), popping a hip outward, arms akimbo, feet wobbling in high-heeled pumps. We didn’t need to buy her high-heeled pumps, of course—but she begged for them!
Whatever forces produced a girl like Tess—nature, nurture, Mattel, Disney—I’m thankful to have her feminine energy skipping and pirouetting through the house. It’s a welcome counterpoint to the clownish, galumphing energy that Leo is so fond of producing. Just as wife balances out husband, sister harmonizes with brother. I feel centered, and in some way complete, by the woman and girl in my life. I bet Leo feels the same, whether or not he realizes it (I’m sure he doesn’t). Despite some troubling aspects of the famous Maurice Chevalier song, I can agree with the closing sentiment:
Thank heaven for them all
No matter where,
No matter who
Without them
What would little boys do?
The answer to this rhetorical refrain is something I can hardly imagine.
