I meander a la Madonna

Madonna with her daughter Lourdes

"What It feels Like For A Girl"

[Spoken:]
Girls can wear jeans
And cut their hair short
Wear shirts and boots
'Cause it's OK to be a boy
But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading
'Cause you think that being a girl is degrading
But secretly you'd love to know what it's like
Wouldn't you
What it feels like for a girl

Let me start by establishing myself as totally pro-girl/woman! I think the fairer sex (a silly expression but in many ways true) is amazing. Besides being physically beautiful, I find girls and women to be intelligent, openly sensitive, and brave. They make great conversationalists, are creative, and often quietly determined. The women I know are often gutsier than men in facing life's tribulations. Many women are heroes to me, and I didn't use the word "heroine" because, after all, we don't have "doctoresses" do we. Actually, I think I've probably blogged these same thoughts or similar ones before.

I have become an ardent "Gleek," and on the Madonna episode of "Glee" the boys in the glee club were assigned the singing of the Madonna song "What It Feels Like For a Girl." I wasn't familiar with the song, but I found it to be very thought-provoking. Let's put aside the possible physical meaning of the song's title, and go with the interpretation that it refers simply to what it is like being a girl. As I thought about it, I realized that I have never thought about what it would have been like if I were female. I've thought what it might be like to have been born African-American during the most racist of times. I've thought what it might be like to have been born the member of a tribe in the Amazon rain forest. I've even thought what it might have been like to have been born a dog. But never a girl!! And I don't know why. Is it because I believe that although girls are so different from us boys, we're still so much the same in our basic humanness? Or is it because I don't know how to think what it's like to be a girl, because girls are so complicated and unpredictable in their un-boyness? Or is it because I'm just an insensitive, thick-headed boy?!

To return to Madonna's song that says it's O.K. for a girl to dress boy-like, but degrading for a boy to dress in girlie clothing. It's certainly true of skirts and dresses for guys. Unless your William Wallace, you're going to take heat in kilt. What about boys who wear their hair long and opt for an earring, though? I got remembering that when I was a college kid with a good head of hair, more than one person suggested to me and my friends that we looked like girls. I've never tried the earring though and have always wanted to. Maybe I'll experiment soon.

This blog draws no conclusions, which, with girl vs. boy questions, is often the case, I think.