On the color-coded toy aisles of our childhoods and our now
My mid-life crisis came at Christmas vacation, when my younger daughter said I play with dolls.
We had been talking about gendered words. My younger daughter studies languages. Someone had recently referred to her as a “female,” and when an uncle asked what was wrong with that, I thought how many times I had seen her same reaction on social media.
“He was using it as an adjective,” my daughter said. “A description. It’s objectifying.”
This made me think of my time in the military, when everyone was either “Male” or “Female,” the words used as a last name. …
