A few words about Free to be...you and me

I don't know how we came into possession of this recording from the 1970s, but...wow. Rachel put it in the CD player the other day and she has fallen in love with the story of Atalanta, retold for then-modern audiences and partly voiced by Alan Alda. I'm really amazed at how well it has held up.

A few of the songs made me cry. One of them is about a boy named William who loves playing with dolls...as well as baseball, badminton, etc. His father is worried, his older brother calls him an idiot, and then it's wise Grandma who takes his father aside (I'm guessing Grandma is the dad's mom, not the mom's mom) and tells him to stop worrying, that it's great that William likes to play with dolls because he'll have to diaper and hold and love his OWN little kids one day. It made me cry because more than 30 years after this CD came out, we are STILL assigning (if unconsciously) gender stereotypes to boys and girls. Witness all the fuss over the blog and, eventually, the book deal from the mom who was outraged when fellow moms at her boy's school tsk-tsked when her son insisted on wearing girl clothes. I fear we really haven't come very far since then.

There's also another song about a kid who has no friends; he has just moved to a new town and he meets Naomi, who also has no friends, so they form a "no friends" club. The kid describes himself and his life in the sort of stream-of-consciousness fashion that made me wonder if he's autistic. Certainly something not many people talked about 30 years ago.

And there's a girl whose grandma comes over when the girl's parents go on vacation. The grandma is scolding and grumpy and the song changes into a song about "Goodbye to Girl-Land," or something like that, and it made me stop and pause and wonder if I'm too grumpy and tired and anxious and worried (yes). I hate to think that will be Rachel's memories of me when she was a little girl.

Anyway, it's a great CD and I'm glad I (re)discovered it. As to the gender stereotyping, there's not much of that going on in my house. Rachel may be way into princesses and pink and purple and fairies and unicorns and wands and sparkles, but for her birthday party Drew has bought...water guns. For everyone. Heaven help us.