Pink Brain, Blue Brain (mini-review)

My primary issue with most books that fall under the umbrella of gender studies is that they’re almost always viewed under a white, middle-class lens. The pink, frilly, princess-y version of girlhood is, in my experience at least, a middle-class construct. There’s a quote from a Lynda Barry book I love which goes something like “There were lots of girls on my street, but no girly-girls.” This mirrors my experience as a girl growing up in a working-class neighborhood where “girl things” were derided as “snooty.” It was cooler to be a tomboy. Yeah, I accept that there’s a certain degree of internalized misogyny at work here, but having the pink, fluffy canopy bed festooned with stuffed animals, and a wardrobe full of dress-up clothes was something “rich girls” had. It was a model of femininity largely unavailable to me. Fortunately, Pink Brain, Blue Brain doesn’t go there, and does briefly touch on the class issues that influence how we define masculinity and femininity.

Although I would have loved to have seen issues of class and race explored further, Eliot's book did a nice job of handling the nature vs nurture debate, though none of it was too surprising: yes, there are organic differences in boys and girls, but they're actually pretty small and exacerbated by society's expectations.