More on a Dead Bird's Luck & Intro to the TomGirl Movement

2 things Daughter told me about today:

1) Lucky the dead bird had a stroke of bad luck. Both regular readers know that Daughter recently found two dead birds in the backyard of a friend's home. The girls gave them proper burials, and Daughter named her bird Lucky. She did this because the other bird was bloody and had guts hanging out. Her bird wasn't inside out upon death, and so Daughter deemed him lucky. Today, I picked her up from Friend's house again and Daughter informed me that Lucky wasn't so lucky anymore. Apparently, the graves had been unearthed and the bodies removed. Daughter believes Lucky's fate was as dinner for another animal. Thus, Lucky's once intact body has likely been mutilated. This reinforces the entire point of my first post on this matter: things truly are relative.

2)Almost all the boys in Daughter's 3rd grade class are self-proclaimed "Tomgirls." I'd never heard that one before, but Daughter explained it as term for boys exihibiting traditionally 'girl' qualitites. Apparently the boys are big on fashion, coordinating outfits, making friendship bracelets and migrating to passive forms of agression. This is all something the boys are aware and proud of; many of them have even come up with female alter-ego names for when they are really feeling it. Daughter has a crush on Rebecca. I guess the Northern California metrosexual craze has trickled down to the youth. I think the phenomenon of TomGirls is great. It seems these boys must not have heard as much bullshit about how men should act and what a woman's role is. When I was a kid, most father's I knew would tell a son with a female alter-ego to stop acting like a girl. When I was in school, a self-proclaimed TomGirl would have been the center of bullying and ridicule. I like the development, but am bummed we are still placing behaviors on a male/female spectrum. As if friendship bracelets have their own vagina or something.