Do you remember how old you were when you first heard this rhyme:
What are little boys made of
Snips & snails & puppy dogs' tails
That's what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of
Sugar & spice & all things nice
That's what little girls are made of.
Likely, you were a child when you first heard that rhyme. If you were anything like me, the words resonated as cute, easy to remember, and kinda fun to repeat. However, as children, it was beyond us to realize that these words would be some of the most powerful and influential lines we would ever hear.
For context, the rhyme was written by a prominent English Poet Laureate of his day, Robert Southey, in 1820. The full composition is titled What Folks Are Made Of or What All the World Is Made Of and goes on to describe what babies, young men, young women, sailors, soldiers, nurses, fathers, mothers, old men, old women, and an assortment of people in different roles and life stages are made of. Like most people, I've never heard the full poem, but I did find this additional stanza:
What are young women made of
Ribbons and laces, and sweet pretty faces
That's what young women are made of.
Back in the day, circa 1820, gender wasn't a common term thrown around in conversation. Even the sciences didn't have use for the word, but still, Robert Southey happened to craft the perfect tool for gender brainwashing destined to stigmatize generations of girls and boys, women and men around the globe.
Robert's simple rhyme became the definitive social template for what society expects of feminine and masculine. To be Feminine is to show the world that you are sweet as spice, and perfectly nice before growing into a woman with ribbons in her hair, lace on her hem, and widely desired for her pretty face.
I can almost feel the collective blood pressure of feminists rising as I write these words. However, I'm yet to know of any baby born a feminist. Far more common are baby girls smothered in pink, told repeatedly how pretty she is, and kept from doing anything that might make them boy-like.
So is being sweet as spice and eternally nice the worst thing we can project onto little girls? Some women would say, hell yes. However, there is a far more damaging message written between the lines in Southey's rhyme. It's that when we condition girls to only nurture qualities like being pretty, sweet, and nice, we are setting them up to only be admired rather than being respected. I mean, wouldn't it be Nirvana if we conditioned every human to aspire to be sweet as spice and nice to each other? The problem is that the world we've created respects those who grew up with snips and snails and are willing to pull on puppy dog tails.
If our world respects the strong, capitalism rewards the ruthless, and patriarchy entitles the masculine, where does that leave the nice, sweet, and pretty? It leaves her eternally a victim of a blueprint written over two hundred years ago.
Christopher
