As our family is growing, and we now have a boy and girl to rear, I've begun to notice the extreme differences in the way each gender is instructed to behave. I'm not referring to boys can be wild and dirt loving while girls must be quiet and neat. Though that does play a part in gender related behavior. No, rather it's the idea that women must be small.
Have you ever ridden on a bus or subway and noticed how men sit; knees splayed covering two or three seats? Meanwhile most women try to touch as little surface as possible, perching on the edge of a seat or worse sucking in their being to avoid contact with anything more than the hand bar.
After seeing this blog I started looking at how we instruct girls vs. boys to occupy space.
http://www.bustle.com/articles/34279-why-do-guys-spread-their-legs-when-sitting-on-the-subway-my-weekend-of-sitting-like
Reflect for a moment on common things we say to children.
Stand up straight
Suck your tummy in
Keep your knees together
Be quiet
Or flip through a magazine and note how women seem to be more slim each year and men are bulking and more muscular than ever before. Girls are perceiving pressure to be thin from a younger and younger age. As explored here when 5 year old girls were asked about dieting (kindergarteners!)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2530935/
It's almost as if society wants women to just disappear.
