Chakisae is not very girlie, in the pink, frilly, dress-wearing kind of way. She likes boy clothes and says, with great pleasure, "I look like a boy!" The blue snake t-shirt and the baggy, faded jean shorts -- both hand-me-downs from Ben -- are among her favorites. And don't you love that pose?
I am not very girlie either (never wear skirts or dresses), but there is a tiny part of me that is bothered by this fashion trend (not sure why, but maybe because I am sensitive to the fact that she/we already stand out and worry the boy-clothes thing makes it worse? I don't know). Still I try to just go with it because what's the point of arguing about clothes? Plus, sometimes things she thinks are "boy clothes" aren't really. Like the polo shirts she loves. They are all girl shirts, with little hearts or flowers on the chest, but she calls them "boy shirts," I guess because Ben and Jim wear polos so often. The newest one she picked out is white with lightening bolts -- red, sparkely bolts, but still a "boy" shirt in her mind.
(as a side note, is it depressing that 3-year-olds already know these gender specifications? That she knows a shirt with gathered sleeves or smocking is a "girl shirt?")
Chakisae is also into "bad guys," though we think this mostly means superheroes. Because if we say which bad guys, she'll say Batman or Spiderman. We've explained they aren't bad, but the message doesn't seem to stick. On vacation, when a sales person at Cracker Barrel asked her if she liked Elmo and Big Bird and the like, she said, "No. I like bad guys." The woman look appalled. Kisae really does like Sesame Street but she is very into bad guys. Whoever they are.
Tell her she looks beautiful and she will say, "I not bootiful! I bad! I like bad guys!"
For weeks, she also was into Batman (Ben has several old Batman costumes, which have no made their way to her dress up box). She said she planned to be Batman for Halloween. Fine, I said. She makes a very cute Batman.
The other day we got a catalog in the mail advertising Halloween costumes. Both kids spent quite a lot of time looking through it. And then Kisae told me she wanted to be ...a Mermaid. A pink one, no less.
Go figure.
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