Sports Day, Or Why We All Need to Raise Feminist Kids

I was a parent helper at Sports Day today. We were in the amazing Kelvin Hall, on a *real* track with the *real* rubbery smell that so vividly reminds me of the days when I could run around tracks and across fields and anywhere my legs wanted to go. I watched the kids struggle with one of what appears to me to be the biggest dilemmas they all face: how to compete without anger, fear, or being consumed by your own insecurities. Boys get told that they need to be the fastest and the bravest and score the most goals. Girls still, unfortunately, get told in very insidious, hard-to-challenge ways, that they should be the best they can be as long as it doesn't interfere with boys being the best. They should, "when trying hard to be their best," be just "a little less," to paraphrase Madonna.

I watched as girls subtly discouraged each other, unconsciously letting the boys 'win'. Not that anyone was allowed to win, of course, since Sports Day is an anti-competitive affair in which no one is allowed to win, because that might discourage those who try and fail. The real world isn't like that, and I think it is a disastrous failure, as policies go. My sons are competitive, and the only way they will learn to manage their competitiveness is to be competitive and to compete. They have to learn that sometimes they'll win, and sometimes they won't, and that we aren't all equally good at everything.

One girl wasn't discouraged. She was quiet, but was still clearly part of one of the more powerful cliques in operation in P6 and P7. She tried hard and was good at the javelin throw, the long jump, and many other things. But when I saw her running, she was awe-inspiring; I wanted to cry(for her, and in some way, for me). I remember that feeling, the joy of knowing you are not just good at something, but spectacular at it. I remember flying over hills and around tracks, feeling as though I would never have to stop unless I wanted to stop.

It was like turning on a light; her sureness was a beacon, and it pulled the other girls on her relay along with her. I wanted to tell her so many things afterwards. I wanted to say,

'Don't slow down for people who don't make you feel the same way you feel when you run.'
'Don't ever let anyone tell you that running or being athletic means you are less female or girly or special.'
'Don't ever forget the feeling of flying, and what it means to know and to understand your body and all that it is capable of.'
'Be you, all of you, all the time, just as you are you when you run.'

I didn't say most of those things, apart from the last one. I didn't want to frighten her off. I remember what it is like to be all legs, half-tamed, and half-comfortable in your own skin. I told my sons instead, and listened as they talked about her, and all of the things she's good at, without jealousy or fear. I thought that I might be managing to raise feminists after all, and so might some other Mom on the Southside.