Tonight in the plaza, Alex was walking Zoë around in front of a group of old ladies. They stopped and one asked, rather pointedly, if Zoë was a boy or a girl. I answered "girl," and she went on to ask (Zoë) why she wasn't wearing earrings. Then she repeated the whole interaction in reference to Alex. It was utterly astounding to her that the two were indeed girls and yet did not have pierced ears. My explanation included "Americans" and "it's not our custom," after which she seemed vaguely satisfied and dismissed the whole baffling situation with "ah, you're not from here." Now I know why people refer to Zoë as a boy here even when she's wearing a dress (it isn't that surprising anyway, considering the little boys wear tights under their shorts to church when it's cold).
Also, the plaza was nearly empty tonight but the bars were packed . . . Barcelona was playing Manchester United in the European Champions cup (and I actually watched sports!). But when Barcelona won 2-0, there was very little celebration around these parts. Nothing like when Madrid won a similarly large victory in 2000. I wonder if it's because Madrid and Barcelona are such fierce rivals? I'm curious who these Madrileños were rooting for.
3 comments:
When Nicole was that age, even when she had very feminine clothes on, old people always called her a boy. And that's right here in the US of A!
I think this is a really interesting examples of what markers (or performances) of gender people recognize culturally and for that matter, how culturally constructed they are. In a 7th grade classroom I showed a picture of some South African girls to the students and they could not identify them as girls (they all had short shaved hair and they didn't recognize their school uniforms as gender specific). It was a really nice moment for the students to think about how we "just know" when someone is a boy or a girl but when we cross cultures it's not so obvious because much of how we "just know" is constructed and begins from such a young age.
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