Gender Differences

I took Tootsie (my 11-year-old daughter) and Bubbs (my 9-year-old son) shopping for spring clothes. Tootsie was excited to go, as she generally enjoys picking things out and trying them on. Bubbs, on the other hand, does not enjoy it. He would rather wear last year's too-tight shorts than waste all that time looking and then be forced to endure the torture of the dressing room, to top it all off! He doesn't particularly care what he wears, but he's reached a size where I can no longer simply pull something off the rack and assume it'll fit. He really needs to try things on first. So after some haggling, we set off for the store, a minivan filled with mixed emotions.

Now, we are a family who tries not to have many gender-based stereotypes. I don't automatically assume that all girls love pink or that all boys love sports, or other similar blanket statements. But I have learned that for our family, at least, there are undeniable gender differences when it comes to shopping. Here's the evidence.

Tootsie was very excited about this pair of Old Navy shorts which she picked out herself (one of the very few pink things she owns, by the way):

Bubbs was very excited about this contraption he made out of found and discarded parts scoured from the Old Navy floor:

For the record, he got new shorts, too. But the size he actually tried on was too big, so I just bought the next size down straight off the rack. He was too busy having fun shopping.