The Real Lost Boys

It’s all about Girl Power these days.  And believe me I get it.  Having grown up when I did, I know where this girl power stuff is coming from.  I sat in a class where a teacher told us girls just aren’t as good in math and science.  We need girl power.  The problem is we’ve gone so far the other way that we’ve lost sight of our little boys.

While watching his favorite cartoons the other morning a public announcement came on, one of the girl empowerment ones.  It said that girls and women lead.  My little boy turned to me and asked why boys couldn’t lead.  Wow!  I had to step back and evaluate our new society that tells little boys to take a step back because now the girls and women lead.

If you are a woman, or even a little girl, it sounds nice to lead.  It comes from years and years of oppression.  We need the message to be heard.  But at what cost to our boys and men.

See, now men think that women don’t need them anymore and little boys think they can skate by in life because there is someone else taking the reins.  Yes, it’s wonderful that we are empowering our girls and women.  It is great that we are asking for female leaders in our communities.  We want this.  We definitely need this.  We don’t, however need to disempower.  We don’t need to emasculated men.  We don’t need belittled boys.

As a little girl taunted my son in class the other day, “Girl’s lead, boys follow…”  I saw my son’s look of confusion, not that he had to lead but that the taunt was so unequivocal.  To him sometimes girl’s lead and sometimes boy’s lead.  We’ve bypassed equality somewhere along the way.  We need to find our middle ground again or our little boys are going to get lost.