Shannon Phillips

My dear friend shared this gem, a speech from her daughter, on Facebook: and after I fell all over myself loving it, I asked if I could reprint it. The daughter said yes, but she’d rather not be named. So this is a guest post by Groovy Girl, age 7.

There are two kinds of girls, Mommy. The first one’s obvious: girls who like pink and silky and fluffy and sparkles and Barbie, and really pink, ugly, weird princesses, and makeup and lipstick.

The second kind is the kind of girls that are more, like, groovy and stuff. For instance, normally they like peace signs and fluorescent colors, and kind of like zebra stripes, and shirts that are on the shoulder and one sleeve off, and they like teal and light blue, and purple, and heart peace signs, and fluorescent yellow, and really bright orange—bright colors.

And there are not as many kinds of boys. There’s, like, one and a half.

One of the most popular boys that you see a lot of times these days is boys that like action-y kinds of stuff, and plastic, and Star Wars, and blue and green and orange and red. Why do people think that orange is a boy color?

There are actually two more kinds of boys:

Boys who really like animals—turtles, and little mouses, and little lizards—more reasonable things.

The third kind of boy is all fancy and stuff—you know, top hats, mustaches, bow ties, ties, tuxedoes. Fancy things—you know, fancy kinda boy.

Then there’s the “train and vehicle” kind of boy. And the littler boys, the ones that for some reason like trucks and dump trucks—the most ridiculous things you ever heard of.

What I love about this—beyond the effortlessly and endlessly charming “voice” of it—is that Groovy Girl (age 7) already deeply understands something that actually took feminists decades to hammer out. Some of them are still hammering, but modern or “third wave” feminism depends on this insight: that there are multiple ways to construct or perform gender. What’s more, although her own tastes and values shine through pretty clearly, Groovy Girl doesn’t for an instant imply that the “fancy kinda boy” is any less of a boy than a “train and vehicle” kind of boy, or that either type of girl is more or less essentially feminine.

I’m an ugly weird princesses girl myself—initially I thought, wistfully, that maybe I could be the fancy kinda boy, but you know what, it’s ugly weird princesses all the way for me. I would join the Ugly Weird Princesses fan club. I would subscribe to the newsletter. My heart belongs to the ugly weird princesses forever. I’m not that big on makeup or Barbie, but pink and silk and sparkles are a-OK in my book too.

The second thing I love is that Groovy Girl sets off to enumerate one “and a half” different kinds of boys, and she ends up with four, or possibly five depending on how you read it. So the categories are proliferating as she thinks about them. Now obviously, there’s actually well more than two different kinds of girls: there’s probably an infinite number of ways to construct/perform/inhabit femininity. It’s in observing and thinking about this proliferation that we’re able to circle back and invest “femininity” with meaning: some grouping of overlapping segments in the set of Venn diagrams, some collection of commonly shared experiences. No one thing that’s true for every woman or girl, but a lot of things that are, separately, true for many. And the same goes for masculinity. Groovy Girl has basically got this, or at least she’s very, very close.

The last thing I love about this speech is how even the things she assigns to the masculine sphere are not confined there. Turtles and little mouses and little lizards are judged “reasonable”: the strong implication is that a girl such as herself can like those things too. I doubt Groovy Girl would object the proposition that it might go both ways: that a truck-loving boy, say, might also enjoy neon colors. There’s a fluidity to these categories that I love.

Anyway, I’m so glad she allowed me to share. I hope you all are as delighted as I was.

(The title of this post is a nod to Lindy West’s classic The Different Kinds of People That There Are. Warning: because we are talking about a seven-year-old’s off-the-cuff philosophy, critical comments will be ruthlessly moderated unless they are couched in the nicest possible terms.)

I can’t believe that Davy is already two. Robin can’t believe it either. “NO!” he yelled, when directed to wish his brother a happy birthday. “The birthday cake has an X on it!”

Davy also denies that it’s his birthday. We told him he’s two now, and he said, “No! Baby!” So I told him that he’ll always be my baby.

But he’s getting so big!

It all started with Leonard Cohen.

“Hey,” Mom said. “I heard this amazing k.d. lang song, and I want to play it for you. The lyrics are like…la di dah, and every chord she played was hallelujah…”

“Mom,” I said. “You don’t mean the Jeff Buckley song, do you?”

“Uh,” said Sam.

“K.d. lang did it at the Olympics,” said Mom.

“Okay,” I said, “but everybody knows the Jeff Buckley song, I mean I can’t believe—”

“It’s a Leonard Cohen song,” said Sam.

“I don’t care,” said Mom. “The lyrics were so great. And every breath she drew was hallelujah…”

“Mom,” I said. “You are freaking me way the hell out here. All the songs I always assumed that everybody knew…I mean. Do you know—have you heard—my god man, have you heard of Warren Zevon?”

“Who?” said Mom.

And that is how it began. We made a pact. We’d swap playlists, made up of “great songs that everybody should know.” It was okay if they were songs we thought the other person had already heard. They just had to be great.

A few months went by, la-la-la, and I forgot all about the pinkie swear I’d made with my mom. Maybe I forgot about it because it involved Sam being right about music, an event that occurs with such depressing regularity that it all fades into a grey sameness.

Until Mom came for another visit, and she had a piece of ruled legal paper, much folded, and written upon (and scratched out, and written again) with ballpoint pen.

“It’s my playlist,” she said. “Let’s put it together now! I want to see how you do it.”

“Mom,” I said. “I’m making dinner. I’ll just go and buy these from iTunes when I have a spare second.”

HAH HA HA HA HAH.

I’m not saying it didn’t go smoothly at first. Track one, Hank Snow, “Golden Rocket.” Plug it into the iTunes search feature, ninety-nine cents, badda bing, badda boom.

Track two, “Sweet Sunny South,” Smith Lester. (Smith Lester?) Nope. Not happening. iTunes has some versions of the song, but none by that artist—in fact, given that I can’t quite make out Mom’s handwriting, I’m not sure that “Lester” is the last name at all. But there’s no likely matches either on iTunes or Amazon.

So I put that one away and move on. (By this time, Mom’s gone back home, so she’s not available for an immediate consultation.)

Track three, “Hard Times,” Geyser Stshhh….—… (Mom’s handwriting is illegible.)

At this point I start to suspect that I’m being outright trolled. I call Mom. “Hey,” I demand. “What’s this supposed to say, on track three? Geyser what?!”

“Geyer Street Sheiks,” she says promptly. “They’re a local band. They’re famous in St. Louis.”

This is my introduction to Music Hipster Mom.

“The Geyer Street Sheiks? Oh, you’ve probably never heard of them.”

After some time talking through the playlist, researching things, and digging through various obscure bands’ obscure discographies, I’ve got a clearer picture. First, it wasn’t Smith Lester. It was the “Smith Sisters,” and the song Mom wants is from their album “Mockingbird,” never released in digital format, but available on vinyl for like five bucks.

“I have that on vinyl.”

Meanwhile: the Geyer Street Sheiks tune was never released at all. They were famous in St. Louis, yeah: but then they broke up, and apparently had some kind of acrimonious dispute over the rights, such that none of their music is currently available in any format whatsoever.

Except. Except that…there’s some kind of sketchy eastern European pirate site…and they’ve got Great Dreams by the Geyer Street Sheiks for download, if I’m only willing to give them a credit card number, which I am not…

Several hoops jumped through later (it involved buying a one-time-use PIN number from an ever-so-slightly more reputable third party site) I have the Geyer Street Sheiks’ Great Dreams, and also the Smith Sisters’ Mockingbird, but the former doesn’t have the track Mom wanted and the latter is still only on vinyl. (The record arrives, and I put it on our bedroom dresser. “Gaah!” says Sam. “I think those women are witches! I think they are trying to magick me from that album cover! They might already have my soul!”)

But…hold up…

“Mom,” I said. “On this Geyer Street Sheiks album, I’m seeing ‘Sweet Sunny South.’ And in iTunes, I’m seeing the Smith Sisters covered ‘Hard Times.'”

“No!” said Mom. “You’re kidding! Well, that’s probably fine, then, just switch ’em.”

(It wasn’t actually that easy, of course. We discussed first whether maybe it was the Red Clay Ramblers’ version of “Hard Times Come Around No More” that she’d actually meant? In the end I executed editorial control, and went with the version that plucked most deeply at my subconscious. I must’ve heard the Smith Sisters track a lot as a little girl: once I finally had it playing, every single note sounded familiar.)

OKAY. GOOD. We can move on. Track four, Gillian Welch, track five, Bob Dylan, no problemo. Track six, W.C. Handy performing his “St Louis Blues,” takes no more than a moment of searching. Track seven, “Marcia Ball — C.C. Rider.”

You’d think that would be easy. I’ve got a couple Marcia Ball albums on my iPod already. Not that particular track, but…you’d think…

“Oh,” says Hipster Mom. “Didn’t she ever put that on any of her albums? I just remember she used to play that song when I went to see her at the Split Rail or the Broken Spoke or something like that—it had a fence or some sort of a wooden part—”

“Mom,” I said. “This doesn’t help me find the track on iTunes.”

“This was in Austin,” she said. “It would’ve been ’72 or ’73…”

“Okay,” I said, “THAT explains why it’s not on iTunes.”

“I was into Marcia Ball before she was cool.”

So, a little more digging—my Google-fu is pretty strong—and I’ve got it. It was the Split Rail all right, in Austin, but it wasn’t Marcia Ball: not yet. This was before her solo career. She was playing in a band called Freda and the Firedogs. They made an album, and it included a version of the song: “EZ Rider.” There are used copies of the Freda and the Firedogs album for sale on Amazon for $49.99, but you can also get it directly from Bobby Earl Smith if you Paypal him fifteen bucks. When I do so, he sends me a very nice email thanking me for the order and asking how I heard about the band, and I’m kind of blown away. I tell him it was because he was track seven on Mom’s handwritten playlist of songs everybody should know.

It was the Split Rail, confirms Bobby Earl Smith. He says it’s always nice to hear from a fan of the old band.

Track eight, Emmylou Harris, I’ve got that one already. In fact the rest of the list is just about that easy. I’m thrown for a second by track fourteen: Jimmy Buffett? Really? I mean, I enjoy the occasional Jimmy Buffett tune myself, but I’m not under the impression that it’s anything but shameful.

“This is not irony. I’m absolutely sincere about Jimmy Buffett.”

Okay, Hipster Mom. If you say so.

Of course, after I’d gotten Mom’s playlist together, I had to finish my own. So here’s the final Mother/Daughter playlist:

MOTHER

Hank Snow — The Golden Rocket
The Geyer Street Sheiks — Sweet Sunny South
The Smith Sisters — Hard Times
Gillian Welch — Elvis Presley Blues
Bob Dylan — Boots of Spanish Leather
W.C. Handy — St. Louis Blues
Freda & The Firedogs — EZ Rider
Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson — Gulf Coast Highway
Martin Simpson — Sammy’s Bar
James Taylor — My Traveling Star
Sharon Shannon and Steve Earle — The Galway Girl
Taj Mahal — Candy Man
Jorge Drexler — Al Otro Lado del Río
Jimmy Buffett — A Pirate Looks at Forty
Amy Rigby — Dancing with Joey Ramone

DAUGHTER

U2 — One
Sinéad O’Connor — The Emperor’s New Clothes
Talking Heads and John Goodman — People Like Us
Thomas Dolby — I Love You Goodbye
Warren Zevon — Accidentally Like A Martyr
Jeff Buckley — Hallelujah
Crash Test Dummies — Superman’s Song
The Mountain Goats — Going to Georgia
Emmylou Harris — Going Back To Harlan
Guy Clark — Sis Draper
The Waterboys — The Raggle Taggle Gypsy
Linda Ronstadt — Willing
Scott Miller & The Commonwealth — The Way
Warren Zevon — Mohammed’s Radio
Bruce Springsteen — My City Of Ruins

You can see there’s some similarities. We both put Emmylou on our playlists—she’s my favorite singer, probably not least because I grew up with her music. We both have a weakness for Irish bands and rootsy Americana. I limited myself to fifteen songs because that’s what Mom did, but I put Warren Zevon on twice, because he’s Warren Zevon.

Anybody who wants a copy, leave your mailing address in the comments and I’ll burn you CDs of both mixes. Old skool, baby!

So when we arrived at the breeder today, thrumming with excitement about bringing home our new puppy, it quickly became clear that:

a) in the year and a half we’ve been on the waiting list, the breeder totally forgot who we were

and

b) as a result, she’d matched us with a puppy who was going to be temperamentally unsuited to our family. The puppy she’d picked out for us was much smaller than her littermates, and showed some tendencies toward shyness and anxiety. This is obviously a bad fit for a family with two active and exuberant little boys. To her credit, she realized the mistake immediately and was pretty up-front about it. But the end result is that we came home without a puppy.

The next litter will be born in July, ready to come home in September. It’s definitely a disappointment. But the kids actually took the whole thing quite well. They seemed to feel that driving an hour and a half to play with a puppy for fifteen minutes, and then turning around and driving home, was a perfectly sensible use of a day.

I just wanted to wish my grandmother a happy birthday today. She’s 88 and in great health. Hope you have a wonderful day, Grandmama! You’re an inspiration.

Me: Good night, Robin. You’re a good little boy.

Robin: Thanks, mama. You’re a good lady too.

A) Davy likes to rummage in the kitchen cabinets for toys. He really likes the baking-implements drawer, which has the cookie-cutter shapes and other interesting things.

B) When he gets sleepy in the late morning, Davy crawls into my lap—often still clutching the last thing he was playing with—puts his head on my shoulder, and cuddles himself to sleep.

C) The two facts above explain why the sleeping toddler I just laid down in bed is still loosely cradling a pie slicer to his chest. I would surreptitiously exchange it for a nice stuffed teddy or something, but hey, who doesn’t like pie?

In other news, Robin is on his feet again, we’ve all still got a lingering cough, the weather is beautiful, and I really need to get my garden planted. I’m also hoping that we’ll have chicks soon: the chicken lady has been kind of flaky. We might have to order some chicks from the Internet (because you can totally do that!) if I can’t find a local breeder to buy from.

Robin sprained his ankle over the weekend—we took him to the doctor and it’s definitely not broken, but the poor little guy is pretty laid up. He won’t walk, but crawls around the house instead. Obviously he’s going to stay home from school until he’s walking again.

Meanwhile, I am pondering (and not for the first time) the following springtime conundrum:

Men in rolled-up shirtsleeves—totally sexy.
Men’s button-down short sleeve shirts—never sexy.

Why is that?

Although I haven’t been getting anything productive done lately, I have been playing a lot of video games. Specifically, I just finished Mass Effect 3.

I really enjoy the Mass Effect series (it’s my second favorite after the Dragon Age series), for a lot of reasons, but I think maybe one of the most interesting is that this is a man’s story that can be played as a woman.

What I mean by that is: Mass Effect is a science-fiction story about the square-jawed, hard-boiled space trooper, Commander Shepard. You know, this guy:

Right? Generic White Guy Sci-Fi Hero.

Only—you’re actually allowed to make Commander John Shepard whoever you want him to be. He doesn’t have to be white, and he doesn’t even have to be a guy. In my games it’s Commander Jane Shepard, wiry, tough-talking redhead, who the crew of the SSV Normandy would follow to the gates of frackin’ hell and back.

Because most of the video-game-playing audience is male, the story is designed with the guy pictured above in mind. I think BioWare has said that 82% percent of players choose a male Commander Shepard. So if you decide to make Jane your heroine, you get to play through a game where you are really, truly treated just as a man would be in the same kind of story. You get to try on that swagger, you get that deference and privilege and assumption of leadership. Your competence and bad-assery are never questioned. Women of all species throw themselves at you. Men of all species give you the bro-fist. You get really big guns.

There’s something…subversive, and liberating, and just enormously fun about this. Our cultural assumptions around masculinity and femininity are so deeply embedded that I don’t know if it’s even possible to create a story so free from gendered weight unless it was done exactly this way: a story that was developed for a hero, in which a heroine is unexpectedly substituted. I mean, let me put it this way. Over the course of three games, though she’s variously: captured, beaten, stripped of command, and just frackin’ shot to hell (at one point she’s literally clawing her way forward as her own blood pools around her), Jane Shepard never endures any kind of sexual threat. I could be forgetting some throwaway line somewhere, but I really don’t think there’s anything, and there’s definitely not anything major or serious. Rape just isn’t a problem that exists in Shepard’s storyverse. Can you imagine an epic story told about a female soldier that never even glances at the possibility of rape? It’s weirdly refreshing.

I mean, it’s a cliche that when people sit down to tell a story about a “strong female character,” one of the first, laziest signifiers they’ll reach for is to make her a rape survivor. We have plenty of Red Sonja-style “strong female characters” for whom sexual vulnerability is combined-and-contrasted with some kind of superficial martial strength. And clearly the real point is titillation for the (presumably male) audience. Obviously rape exists, and stories, including fantasy and sci-fi stories, about women dealing with rape do and should exist also. But damn, is it nice to have one epic action tale where Our Heroine spends exactly as much time worrying about rape as Captain Kirk does.

Being Jane Shepard lets me try on a specifically male fantasy of power and derring-do, but I get to experience it as a woman. I dunno, I mean ultimately I don’t want to stress this too hard. I just feel like it’s something video games can do that other forms of storytelling, like books or movies, usually can’t. It’s horizon-broadening. And it’s fun.

Sorry I haven’t updated recently. I’ve been really introverted over the past couple weeks, for a few reasons, I think. One is that we’re finally getting proper weather for the season: rainy and chill. This is great (although we’re still almost certainly looking at a drought this summer) but it does make me want to curl up and not move a lot.

My urge to hibernate was helped along by the fact that our car broke down (stranding Sam on the freeway!) and was in the shop for several days. There goes our tax refund. So, obviously, we weren’t getting out a lot.

We’ve also had two waves of colds—just when I thought everybody was getting better, we all came down with round 2. It’s not an awful cold, just a runny nose and a cough, but it keeps Davy up at night, so both Sam and myself are back to a pretty strung-out level of sleep deprivation.

Anyway, we’re all fine, just dealing with multiple annoyances and (at least on my part) a general desire to hide under the blankets.