My life as a girl, 1949
The story begins
Note: this is an updated revision of an earlier post
“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.”
- Paul Coelho
My first reaction is that Coelho is describing the impossible. Do any of us have an essential self, a person we would be deep inside, not matter where or when we were born? “Maybe”, he says, so he is also wondering, unsure. Like him, I wonder. I consider my life a path to self-awareness, and the way I understand clothing tells me that how we dress plays a big role in that process.
My life as a girl began at 10:00 a.m. on May 19, 1949, when I was delivered, just one of 3.5 million babies born that year, half of them female. Of course, I was completely unaware of my identity or what society expected of me based on the mysterious concept of sex. In 1949, sex and gender as separate concepts did not exist in the popular vocabulary. “Gender” was a grammatical term, not yet adapted to refer to the cultural norms associated with “biological” sex. Instead, in common speech and thought, what we today would parse as “sex”, “gender”, “sexual orientation”, and so on, were contained in the single word “sex”.
Unlike babies today, my sex was a surprise to my parents. The only “gender reveal” was at birth. Because I was delivered by C-section, my mother and I stayed in the hospital for 10 days, a fact confirmed by the “first ride in a car” entry in my baby book. That record book, conscientiously filled out in my mother’s beautiful handwriting, adds more information and images. The birth announcement occupies a central place on the first page.
We’re thrilled and delighted
And all in a whirl…
For an “ANGEL” arrived
And she’s OUR LITTLE GIRL.
My name and vital statistics follow, in my father’s handwriting. It wasn’t until I was writing this that I realized that my father had chosen the card, since it could not have been purchased in advance and Mom was still in the hospital.
What did they know about raising a girl, I wonder? What did they know about gender roles based on contemporary expert advice? Based on their own childhood experiences?
Mom was the second of seven girls in a large German American family. She told us stories of Sunday dinners during the Depression when the only son, my Uncle Paul, and my grandfather were the only ones to get the meat from the single chicken shared among the ten of them. Grandmother and the girls got gravy on their potatoes. The older girls took care of the younger ones as each baby came along. My Aunt Carol, ten years her junior, was “Mom’s baby”. All the daughters learned housekeeping and cooking at a young age, and were expected to leave home and earn their own way right after high school. My mother inherited her mother’s critical nature and high standards, so was inclined to steer me not-so subtly towards a future of being a wife, a mother, and - if possible - a lady.
If Mom had a complete education in what was expected of a girl, Dad had the opposite. His mother ran off with a younger man when young Bob just five, and he grew up in a three-male household, with just his father and older brother Joe - the one I am named after.
Ah yes, the name. There are gender clues there, as well. My mother had chosen “Nanette”, supposedly after her Aunt Hannah, also called Nan. But was it also a nod to the free-spirited heiress in the Broadway and movie hit, “No, No, Nanette”? According to family lore, Dad took advantage of the C-section anesthetic to name me after his beloved brother. My middle name, Ann, was a nod to my mother’s wishes. To my mother, I was Jo Ann. To Dad, I was always Jo. I was in my teens when I finally learned this, and was appalled and intrigued. I was, by then, no Nanette; maybe a Nan (my favorite Alcott character). Still, I wondered, would a Nanette have turned out differently from a Jo? What did my name suggest about what kind of daughter my father had in mind?
Although my mother certainly tried her best to turn me into the ideal girl of the 1950s, my father had considerable influence. Dad owned a 45 rpm recording of Arthur Godfrey reciting two essays by Alan Beck. On one side was “What is a Boy?”, and on the other, “What is a Girl?”. Dad not only played the “girl” side frequently, he could also recite it from memory. Here it is, in its entirety:
What is a girl?
Alan Beck (1949)
Little girls are the nicest things that can happen to people. They are born with a bit of angel-shine about them, and though it wears thin sometimes, there is always enough left to lasso your heart—even when they are sitting in the mud, or crying temperamental tears, or parading up the street in Mother’s best clothes.
A little girl can be sweeter (and badder) oftener than anyone else in the world. She can jitter around, and stomp, and make funny noises that frazzle your nerves, yet just when you open your mouth, she stands there demure with that special look in her eyes. A girl is Innocence playing in the mud, Beauty standing on its head, and Motherhood dragging a doll by the foot.
God borrows from many creatures to make a little girl. He uses the song of a bird, the squeal of a pig, the stubbornness of a mule, the antics of a monkey, the spryness of a grasshopper, the curiosity of a cat, the speed of a gazelle, the slyness of a fox, the softness of a kitten, and to top it all off He adds the mysterious mind of a woman.
A little girl likes new shoes, party dresses, small animals, first grade, noisemakers, the girl next door, dolls, make-believe, dancing lessons, ice cream, kitchens, coloring books, make-up, cans of water, going visiting, tea parties, and one boy. She doesn’t care so much for visitors, boys in general, large dogs, hand-me-downs, straight chairs, vegetables, snowsuits, or staying in the front yard.
She is loudest when you are thinking, the prettiest when she has provoked you, the busiest at bedtime, the quietest when you want to show her off, and the most flirtatious when she absolutely must not get the best of you again. Who else can cause you more grief, joy, irritation, satisfaction, embarrassment, and genuine delight than this combination of Eve, Salome, and Florence Nightingale.
She can muss up your home, your hair, and your dignity—spend your money, your time, and your patience—and just when your temper is ready to crack, her sunshine peeks through and you’ve lost again. Yes, she is a nerve-wracking nuisance, just a noisy bundle of mischief. But when your dreams tumble down and the world is a mess—when it seems you are pretty much of a fool after all—she can make you a king when she climbs on your knee and whispers, "I love you best of all!"
Next week: What the experts had to say about me.
I’m an overachiever today! There’s a new post on my other Stack, too!
