Mike Messner has written a few pieces that I do not teach courses on gender without. One of them is an article about the opening ceremonies of a American Youth Soccer League in which his son participated–“Barbie Girls Versus Sea Monsters: Children Constructing Gender” (2000).* What I love about the article is Messner’s simultaneous attention to structure, culture, and agency. He does this in a way that is beautiful in its simplicity.
The following is the scenario Messner witnessed and wrote about. The opening ceremony for this league asks players to come dressed in uniform and with banners (if they have them), and beyond attempting to create a community, the event seems designed to help the young boys and girls feel like athletes. Each team walks around the track at the local high school football field behind their banner as they are announced. The boys’ team that Messner discusses (the “Sea Monsters”) is sitting together, proudly looking at their large banner of a sea snake appearing to eat a soccer ball. 
A girls’ team (the “Barbie Girls”) enters pulling a wagon with a large Barbie doll standing on a rotating platform and dancing and singing along to Barbie-themed music coming out of a boom box. While at first the boys seem entranced, smiling (and perhaps even wanting to take part), eventually, enough of the boys notice each other noticing the Barbie parade going on and they take action. One of the boys yells out, “NO BARBIE!” and they are on the move, jumping around, and bumping one another. The girls do a good job of not noticing, but “NO BARBIE!” ends up serving as a chant that unites the Sea Monsters in solidarity.
One of the most interesting parts of this analysis to me is that Messner also pays careful attention to the adults in this interaction and examines how they make sense of this behavior. It’s a great example of Thorne’s concept of “borderwork.” The adults take this moment as an opportunity to reflect on just how different boys and girls are. Messner illustrates how much work it is to actually think of boys and girls as completely different sorts of creatures. Continue reading
Inequality by (Interior) Design 