No Sister in Sisterhood

I'm sure I wasn't the only one greatly disturbed by the NYT article last week regarding Rihanna and Chris Brown entitled "Teenage Girls Stand by Their Man."

Life is full of what we teachers call these "teachable moments"--when something bizarrely relevant to your student population happens which then serves as a launching pad for a discussion about the bigger issues. Since I am on sabbatical this semester, I have no idea how my students are responding to the Rihanna/Chris Brown situation. What I do know is that my classes assigned me the homework of watching "This Christmas," the Chris Brown Xmas film because, "Miss, it's so good. When he starts signing, omg..." and when writing Regents essays in class all they wanted was to listen to the Chris Brown Pandora station. They adored Chris Brown--even the guys in class knew every word to every song of his (and several dance moves).

Therefore, when I read the NYT article, I wasn't surprised. But besides the oh-so-tired-blaming-of-hip-hop argument, I strongly disagreed with one part of the article:

Moreover, teenage girls can’t be expected to support Rihanna just because of her gender, youth culture experts say. They see themselves as sharing equal responsibility with boys. Parity, not sisterhood, is the name of the game.

During a presentation about dating violence to ninth graders at Hostos-Lincoln Academy this week, one girl said, “If they hit you, smack them back. Both my parents say that to me.”

That entire argument regarding gender parity is a load of bologna. It's not gender parity that is encouraging girls to hit boys back, it's something more akin to the Biblical legal suggestion "an eye for an eye" that is the unspoken law of the streets. Now, disclaimer necessary, I personally don't "know" life in urban America, but I have worked with a student population who does for over ten years and I have learned a thing or two. If someone beats you up, you fight back or you're a punk (gender notwithstanding--girls fight girls, girls fight boys, boys fight boys). If someone in your crew gets killed, murder is the payback. If someone steals from you, you steal from them. To put it basically, violence begets violence. Period. End of discussion.

To twist this unspoken street law into a interpretation of gender parity is just wrong. Gender has no role in it. It's about revenge and protecting your pride--plain and simple. There is no sisterhood or brotherhood here, just 'hood.

Pause

As the media is hyped with the death of Natasha Richardson, I'm sitting her on a gray New York day thinking of the fragility of life and her two sons.

I can't remember their ages exactly, but I read they are early teens/tweens and now their mother is gone. When I'm 45, Alexandra will be 12 and this baby inside me will be almost 10. I can't fathom leaving them then--or ever. I'm sure in Ms. Richardson's last moments of wakefulness, this thought must of crushed her. As much as I love Adam, I think I can grasp losing him or leaving him. I believe that comes from having had a perpetually ill father my whole life; we were always preparing for his death, from the time I was in elementary school until he died when I was 22. But the whole idea of leaving behind your children is just earth shattering to me.

I know that those two boys/young men are mere miles from me right now. They will wake this morning to an apartment full of more creature comforts than most kids will ever have and their father, but today will be the first full day they no longer have their mom. And--as a mom--that literally breaks my heart.

Ever Google your Unborn Child's Prospective Name?

Googling your unborn child's potential name is a reality in our internet-obsessed lifestyle. I love that I am the only one who comes up when I google my name, but that's because I have a crazy last name. Adam's last name is very WASP-y and bland, therefore with baby #1 I initially tried to spice it up with a unique first name. Didn't work. Before naming Alexandra, I picked every off-the-wall girl's name I could think of and yes, there was already a girl/woman out there with that name when I googled it. We gave up and settled on Alexandra Osa. There's nobody with her full name, at least :)

So when a penis was detected at our 12 week ultrasound, we started brainstorming and googling boy's names. Whoa. Here is what we found:

Right now we are choosing between:


and: (the guy in the middle?)


Who would you prefer your unborn son resemble?

Back when googling Alexandra's name, we found this looney-tune:


And after finding the happiness coach, we stopped googling (until now). Crazy!

(NB: I stole this post from my husband's blog, but I was the one who first googled our potential names!)