Girly Man?

“Oh! What a beautiful little girl you have!”
“Thank you ― he’s a boy.”
“How old is she?”
“He’s ten months old.”
“What’s her name?”
“His name is Edward.”
Pause. Then: “Oh. It’s a boy.”
Smiling, but without any hint of irony or long-suffering: “Yes.”

I cannot tell you how many times I have had this conversation, or variations of it, with friendly strangers and admirers of Edward. As only small children can get away with, he has a habit of staring, grinning, and chattering at strangers that attracts a lot of attention ― and he’s beautiful enough (though I say it myself) to attract a lot of praise as well.

If anything, this praise becomes more frequent as he gets older and learns how to interact more with passers-by. After a few months of having Mommy and Daddy wave his hands “hello” and “bye-bye” to people, Edward finally learned last week to wave of his own volition. His excitement in learning this lesson waned considerably when he discovered that his smiling waves encouraged people to come near to say “hello” back, but what can he do? Adorable babies of either gender have a way of attracting both welcome and unwelcome attention.

At any rate, these well-meaning, incorrect-judgers-of-gender are often quick to tell me why they should be so confidently quick to cry out “girl!” upon seeing my son. The reasons (typically) fall into three categories:

1. He’s such a beautiful baby/he has such beautiful eyes.
I cannot deny the truth of either of these facts, but I fail to understand why good looks are so widely considered to belong solely to female infants.

2. He has such long hair.
I do not get the logic of this one; Edward’s hair is certainly no longer than the average boy’s. I suspect it may be more a matter of his having hair at all. For some reason people tend to think (quite erroneously) that only baby girls can be blessed with hair. Does this mean that the many girls born without hair are always called boys at the grocery store?
Incidentally, of the dozen or more babies born in my church ward in the past year ― a remarkably hairy bunch of newborns ― the only two to be born without abundant tresses have been girls. These two are still, at around ten months each, rather bald (maybe it has something to do with being born in August?); I shall have to ask their mothers what the general public reaction to their gender is.

3. He looks like me.
True, Edward does look rather like me. He looks even more like my father, though, as did I as a child, so I don’t think my features alone are strictly feminine in nature (though, thankfully, strangers never mistake me for a boy). Strangely enough, people who know both Joseph and me always say that Edward looks “just like his dad.” I confess I do not see the resemblance myself, but that is, quite apparently, just me.

Say what they would, I began to get rather annoyed at this constant and consistent misunderstanding concerning my little boy. I am not one for the gender stereotyping that reserves footballs, puppy dogs, and the color blue for boys on the one hand, and dolls, frilly bows, and the color pink for girls on the other ― and besides, Edward has often been mistaken for “Edwina” when wearing puppy dogs and blue anyway ― but I did resolve, once and for all, to offer admiring strangers what help I could in affirming Edward’s True Gender.

When Edward grew out of his last set of clothes a month ago, I went into action and picked out a new, decidedly unfeminine wardrobe. If blue doesn’t work, then perhaps manly stripes and work-out shorts will:

He has been wearing these new clothes for a few weeks now, and ― wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles ― they actually seem to be doing the trick. Not a single stranger has mistaken Edward for a girl (not vocally, anyway), and a few have informed me that my boy is quite handsome (which is true). I guess it’s true what they say: clothes really do make the man.