because you're a girl*

"Little girls are cute and small only to adults.
To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized."
--Margaret Atwood

have you ever seen those cute kiddie panties with lacy behinds? i used to wear them. i mean, the people who took care of me as a child used to make me wear them -- i remember having one in hot pink. they used to make me wear those girly dresses, too, with matching girly socks and girly shoes! i didn't seem to mind. i liked 'em dressing me up that way and styling my hair with girly 'dos -- i knew early on that i was born "a girl".

i grew up playing boys' games though, and i think that's due to both choice and circumstance...

i was pretty close to my brother (him being older than me by only two years), and although we were reared as "boy" and "girl", that didn't stop me from going after the things given to him and the adventures he pursued as a kid. whatever he had, whatever he wanted, and whatever he did i wanted to have, i wanted to do. they gave me dolls and cute girly toys, but i didn't really appreciate them as much as i liked tinkering with his robots, holding his toy cars, and pulling his wooden toy chicken around the house. during those afternoons that he went out of the house to play with the kids in the neighborhood, i went out after him. (i must have looked like his faithful sidekick. hehehe, i miss those days!)

as a result, i got introduced to the following: palupad tabanog. tirador. pitik langgam. luthang. kuti. pusil-pusil. gubat-gubat. lantaka. dakpanay. shatong. bartolata. bangkola. teks. labay-tunga a.k.a. buang-buang. himog traps nga makapiang (sorry na lang ang victims). himog kahoy nga barko-barko, complete with dynamo. dakop butete. dakop wayawaya. dakop tapuri. dakop alindanaw. paaway sa alilawa. dampa! ligo sa ulan. biking. forward rolls. backward rolls... tmtm (too many to mention) really.

however, it was not easy for me to join kuya and the other boys (who were, by the way, mostly my cousins) in their games. they never made it easy for me. i had to beg them to allow me to play with them. most times, they would shrug and say, "dili pwede kay babaye man ka."

"no, because you're a girl."

ouch! what's so big deal about being a girl? i wanted to belong and be part of their "gang" and i got to be told off because... "babaye man ka, tapos gamay pa jud kaayo ka."

to that last line, i was blind and i was deaf. i was pretty insistent, anyway. i knew what i wanted so a lot of times, i submitted to being merely a "kuyog-baboy" (the equivalent of the joker in a deck of cards) -- even if the role annoyed me so much -- just so they would let me into their games. in those childhood games, i took advantage of opportunities just to prove that i can be good at whatever the boys're expected to be good at -- an attitude which i still have to this day all because of...

"dili pwede kay babaye man ka, tapos gamay pa jud kaayo ka."
("no, because you're a girl and you're so small.")

yeah right. thank you for telling me that because that surely took me a long, long way.

i used to be a girly gurl. i went through that little girl-stage of wearing skirts, of having my straight hair curled, and of being a flower girl in a girly gown... but that's so long ago. i'm no longer a girly gurl. i don't like wearing dresses, i refuse to wear skirts, i'm poor with high-heeled shoes, and i detest make-up -- i'm comfy in jeans and shirts and sneakers.

i guess, "dili pwede kay babaye man ka, tapos gamay pa jud kaayo ka" was what happened to me between then and now.

no, i'm no lesbian. i'm just not a girly gurl, that's all.


*you can say that again. just wait. when i finally grow up, you'll see.