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Gendered Talk (With My 6 Year Old)

The other day we were listening to the soundtrack of "& Juliet"; a musical exploring 'what' would have happened and the end of Romeo and Juliet had the latter not taken her own life at the end of the play. The show is actually a jukebox musical meaning that it takes established songs - here, largely pop songs from the late 90s to early 2010s - and uses them to tell an original story.

One of the songs featured is the show is the 2001 Britney Spears song, "I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman".

The lyrics include:
I'm not a girl don't tell me what to believe (Not yet a woman)
I'm just tryin' to find the woman in me, yeah
(All I need is time) all I need is time
(A moment that is mine) that's mine
While I'm in between

Whilst this song was playing Aviva, my six year old daughter, asked what the song was about and why a 'man' was singing about "not being a girl". [To her it was 'obvious' that 'he' was not a girl so why did 'he' have to sing about it!] Now I must confess that I have not actually seen '& Juliet' - though I would really like to - so I needed to do some quick web searching in order to provide Aviva with an accurate answer.

In the musical the song is sung by Francois and May - two characters struggling against established gender-norms - as a way of expressing this tension.

And so I, as a cisgender man, did my best to explain this to Aviva; that some people born into physically Male bodies may not feel completely (or even slightly) like a man and that some people born into physically female bodies may not feel completely (or even slightly) like a woman. Friends come to our home who identify as non-binary or queer-gender and Aviva has always been curious about them. [Note: Short hair on those whom she perceives as women fascinates her!]

Since Aviva and I had this conversation, she has said little about her understanding of my explanation of the song. (Sometimes I wonder if concepts of gender are much more straightforward in the mind of a child then to an adult who has to re-programme years or pre-existing language and ideas around gender).

Suffice to say, over this past weekend, Aviva has had me play "I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman" on repeat!

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