Little League, Big Dreams: How Gender Messages Whirled My Worldview

I remember standing on the fresh dirt of Target Field wearing my little league uniform in 2010 thinking that I would end up playing professional baseball one day. That dream seemed so possible, so real, and so exciting - until it wasn’t. Society’s stereotypes began to change me and squish me into a box I didn’t want to be in because society likes to point out differences and limit people because of them. Gender is one of those things society’s messages dominate over, making it a more complex issue than it really should be. When I was seven I didn’t understand that, but as I began to grow older and have more personal encounters with gender stereotypes and constraints, my outlook on the world itself changed.

As a little kid I was a little league baseball player. I was so excited every day to get to use my pink bat, run around the bases, and smile at my family watching me from the stands, especially my younger siblings with their homemade signs. I loved doing anything related to baseball; I watched the Minnesota Twins games on television while wearing my Joe Mauer jersey, I played wiffle ball in the backyard with my dad and little brother, and most importantly I got to play games with my team. I was the only girl on my team for the two years I played, but that didn’t bother me too much. I was proud of that. The other parents commented on how cute I was with my little brown bob or how adorable my pink coat was while playing. They complimented the boys on how tough they were on the field, how strong they could hit the ball, and how fast they could run. I started to pick up on how differently we would get complimented, and it slowly started to bother me. The other boys began telling me I didn’t belong on the team because baseball was for boys, and this started to get in my head. I started noticing that I was out of place in this environment; the catcher’s gear was designed for a boy, all my teammates and coaches were male, and every other team we played was usually all boys, except for the rare exception of one girl once in a while. After those two years of little league baseball, I switched to girls’ softball, which I played through my senior year of high school. 

I always knew I wasn’t as girly as my younger sister. She was interested in pink princesses when I was interested in sports and Scooby-Doo. My brother and I got along well, playing a new sport in the backyard every day during most summers. I was torn though because I also had a more soft and feminine side to me, one that loved playing with American Girl Dolls and doing crafts. This was hard for a young child to understand, especially having two siblings who each seemed to fit the norms expected of them by society. My parents encouraged me to do what I loved and never seemed to limit me in that way, which was encouraging. 

This naive outlook pivoted when I got to middle school. My seventh-grade religion teacher at the small Catholic grade school I attended used her position of authority over the class to promote her personal agenda. Middle school is already a very confusing time in many people’s lives, but this teacher seemed to make it much more bewildering. She gathered all the girls together one day during class and scolded everyone for wearing leggings, claiming that “men would become distracted by seeing our uterus, the sacred vessel of a woman’s body.” Not only was she anatomically incorrect, but she also scared and shamed a bunch of thirteen-year-old girls into thinking that something normal they were doing was suddenly harmful to themselves and others. She shared many other similar stories with us, like how pink bedroom curtains would attract pedophiles to our houses. Again, this was a seventh-grade religion class.

Not surprisingly, this brought a bucket full of new feelings onto middle school me. I was confused about how an article of workout clothing could be so bad. I started becoming very self-conscious and my anxiety started to get worse all around the same time. I became scared to wear some of my favorite clothes; all I could see when I looked at them was my teacher’s face telling me I was “throwing myself away” by wearing that. Suddenly gender messages became much more apparent in my life. I didn’t create an Instagram account until I was a senior in high school, partly because my parents wanted me to stay off it but also partly because I was scared of acting differently after being exposed to content like that at a young age. I had seen real-life examples of my friends completely shifting after joining social media and I wanted to make sure I stayed genuine to who I was. 

I like to think of middle school as the major turning point in how gender stereotypes affected me. I became more conscious of these messages in real life when the girls would be pulled aside for showing some cleavage or when the boys would be ostracized for crying. Bold and adventurous girls often get labels attached to them, being called fierce or feisty, the same words used to also describe cats. Sensitive guys aren’t “tough enough,” and need to “man up.” These phrases might seem small and insignificant, but their weight can be burdensome. 

Eldra Jackson III gave a very motivating Ted Talk that allowed me to understand how gender can influence others in their developmental years. Jackson’s upbringing looked very different from mine, being that we are opposite genders, grew up in different locations and times, and identify as contrasting races. The way society drew the lines for Jackson, he could only find power as an athlete or as a gangster. The issue of toxic masculinity was working closely with the messages society was presenting, forcing Jackson to fit into boxes he didn’t necessarily fit into naturally. Men have always been shamed for showing a more feminine and sensitive side, and no emotions besides anger are socially acceptable to present. Race adds a whole new level to this idea, but the same principles stand. I couldn’t imagine my emotions having to be suppressed to just anger or happiness, especially because I’m often a very sensitive person. Hearing about the young boy being bullied for enjoying My Little Pony was disheartening, but unfortunately a reality in society. This reinforces the message of how heavy some of the gender messages can be in people’s lives, sometimes even pushing them to the breaking point. Society seems to create a preference for masculine-leaning traits, as analyzed earlier, even though it isn’t fair to others. 

Gender is such a complex and sometimes taboo thing to process, especially with the many factors that can play a part in how people understand it. The stigma surrounding gender has started to fade away slowly, but I don’t foresee it going away anytime soon. Celebrities and other public figures have been recently using their platforms to share informative and encouraging messages regarding gender. It has been helpful to reflect on my own understanding of gender and how these stereotypes played a part in my adolescence. It was a bit discouraging and shocking to look at the picture of seven-year-old me standing on the home field for the Twins, thinking anything was possible when in today’s reality, it wasn’t really.