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May 02, 2005
Keeping girls in their place
I bought this charming little book at a local church rummage sale the other night, thinking my stepmother Sherry (a nurse) would get a kick out of it.
Here are some interesting things I learned from the nurse book: all doctors are men; all nurses are women; all patients are men, except for children hurt in accidents, who are always girls. Nurses "are always cheerful and smiling", even if they are tired, even if they have to clean up someone's shit, even if they've just sustained a serious back injury trying to lift a flailing old man into a bed, even if they hate their crappy job and their stupid uniform. Nurses will bring you your breakfast and sing you to sleep, because they are just like another mommy.
It's a "carefully planned book which will help to answer the many questions that lively children ask".
"Mum, can I be a doctor when I grow up?"
"No dear, you're just a girl. You can only be a nurse."
My favourite part:
Because, after all, they will only be working as nurses until they can find a husband and become baby factories themselves.
On playground accidents:
The message here: girls should not roughhouse in the schoolyard, because they are more delicate than boys and when they fall down they may break a bone (on another page, the child hit by a car while riding a scooter was also a girl; clearly they should just stay safely indoors and dream of the day when they can become nurses and find doctors to marry).
Before you write and remind me that this book was published forty years ago, let me say that I don't think a lot has changed in the way that children are subtly influenced to view themselves: the son of some friends of mine recently said to me "I have all the trucks, and my sister has all the dolls. My mommy said boys can't play with dolls, and girls can't play with trucks". And remember, "math is hard".
One thing I did like in this book was the spiffy endpaper:
I'm thinking of trying to talk Sherry into getting a tattoo of that prim little nurse with all the parts of her uniform labelled. Sherry, I'll get the telephone if you'll get the nurse; we can go together! Deal?
Here's where "careful planning" went a little wrong:
When you are asleep they can do anything they want to you and you will not know about it. Reassuring, no?
Posted by jodi at May 2, 2005 04:14 PM | categories: assholes : dumbass
Comments
Yikes! Good thing they had books like that to dispel the fears of children about to go into surgery. The description makes my skin crawl.
Good idea about the tattoos, though!
Posted by: Kathleen at May 2, 2005 05:48 PM
Blargh!
When i was in chiropractic school, my fave t-shirt said "I'm the doctor my mother wanted me to marry"...
I wish I'd bought it. :D
Posted by: korin at May 2, 2005 05:59 PM
Thank goodness we've at least made *some* progress since that was published. Baby factory indeed. :-P I am more than my uterus thank you!
Posted by: Jessica at May 2, 2005 06:15 PM
With any luck, the Bush administration will be able to bring us safely back to the days when books like this were the gospel truth! I will shoot myself before then.
Posted by: Gina at May 2, 2005 06:56 PM
i remember that book from school. as soon as i saw the front cover i got a rush of memories from the children's section of the local library, or maybe my very first school library. no wonder i turned out like this.
Posted by: anna at May 3, 2005 04:49 AM
I'm a second year med student, and we've started spending a bit of time in the hospital. I'm constantly having to explain to patients--all ages, genders and races--that I'm *NOT* in nursing school, I'm in MEDICAL school and going to be a DOCTOR. Don't get me wrong, I think that nurses are often quite amazingly good at their jobs, and because of the stupidness of American medicine, they spend more time with patients thatn I'll get to. But still, c'mon people. Just 'cuz I've got boobs does not mean I ain't got brains. Plus, I agree that that scary surgery description is bad news--so patriarchal to think that patients should not know what is happening to them.
Posted by: Mia at May 3, 2005 07:18 AM
I think I like the fact that the brittle-boned litle girl is independent enough to go to the ER all by herself to get her broken limbs set. I mean, doesn't that say a lot for the girls?
Yeah, I have yet to come across many (any?)cheerful or smiling nurses in my clinicals.
Fortunately for me, I will be allowed to work forever, since I'm already married, and have provided an heir to the husband. YAY!
Ooops, I had better tell my male classmates that they are in the wrong class, and need to go down the hall, where all the "real men" are learning to be firefighters, because, you know only men do that, too.
W. :)
Posted by: Wendy at May 3, 2005 08:49 AM
Ah, nurses... underpaid and underappreciated. Why give a historically "womanly" job the props it deserves? I mean, people still weirdly differentiate between "male nurse" v. a regular ole' "nurse" - who's always female, right? Argh. It's enough to drive a girl to drink!
Posted by: Elizabeth at May 3, 2005 01:56 PM
Heh. Reminds of the time my oldest son was 3 and was carrying around this baby doll my mom kept at her house for the grandkids. He loved that doll and named him Jeffrey. He would carry him around in his little carrier and talk to him.
My brother-in-law tried to tease him once and I told him if he didn't shut up, I would have to take something away from him that could affect his ability to have children. It worked.
I hate gender roles. But I do have to say, my boys definitely fit into the rough-house stereotype! None of their furniture is new cuz they kill things!
Posted by: Sandy at May 3, 2005 02:24 PM
The girl with the broken leg looks a little um...special...
Posted by: Cap'n at May 4, 2005 05:09 PM
Have I mentioned lately that I love your blog, Jodi? :)
Posted by: Mandy at May 5, 2005 02:51 PM
Gee, the poor nurses would be so disappointed that my daughter received a doctor kit, a basketball hoop, and a giant Tonka dump truck for her birthday (and, granted, some Groovy Girls but then again, someone has to be driving the dump truck).
Posted by: l at May 6, 2005 01:56 AM