MOMMY AND I HATE SHOPPING

A screw on my glasses was threatening to leave on a permanent vacation, so I brought them (and my two-year-old daughter) to the mall.  After spending all of fifteen minutes at the optical shop-where my daughter kept repeating "no shots, no shots, no shots," like someone with severe PTSD-we went to this little play area to, you know, play.  I don't particularly like the mall because it is boring and suburban (thus boring), but it was a rainy day and I figured if we drove all that way, we might as well make it count somehow.

There were several other families in the play area.  On three separate occasions, in the span of about thirty minutes, my daughter was mistaken for a boy.  Now, I don't personally care about this and I made no effort to correct the adults, but I do find it curious.  My daughter was dressed in a bright yellow shirt with a picture of Curious George munching on a banana.  She was also wearing light turquoise pants with little pink hearts on the waistband with white and black "cow" socks.  This outfit I blindly pulled from her drawers that morning.  Really, she could have passed for a girl or a boy but I find it interesting that a) nobody asked, and b) all three assumed she was male.  Now n=3, so this isn't science or anything, but I began to wonder, do people just assume your kid is a boy if he/she isn't dressed in fluffy pink frills?  What cues do we look for when determining sex?  What informs that decision?

So anyway, as we are driving home I say to my child, "Well Honey Bear, that was the mall.  Did you totally hate it?"

Her reply?  An emphatic "yes!"