Yesterday my daughter went to work with her dad for Take Your Child to Work Day (which USED to be Take Your DAUGHTER to Work Day; I don’t know exactly what happened there because I pretty much try to ignore parent in-fighting, but I just assume there were some bullshit charges of “reverse sexism” involved?). I was a little hurt that she didn’t want to come to work with ME, because I have a great deal of knowledge to drop about where to insert line breaks and how to search for public-domain photos of vintage phones and women reading, but she pointed out that she watches me work all the time (accurate) and then we argued over whether she should write a review of the ice-cream parlor in Chincoteague for The Toast (I said no) (although…it’s not the worst pitch I have ever heard, and the Pony Tracks ice cream was seriously delicious).
Anyway, apart from the heir deciding she doesn’t think my job is “so super interesting,” this was an awesome week at The Toast. Here’s how it went:
Sulagna Misra gave us The Everyday Matters of Superheroes, Part I and Part II.
Mallory gave her younger self some solid advice.
Morgan Jerkins interviewed Meredith Talusan:
Womanhood to me is whatever we make it, however we as a collective society choose to invest in the differences in our bodies and what they’re supposed to mean about us. One of the blessings and curses of growing up in a different culture is that I am keenly aware of how so much of what we invest in gender is relative.
“It’s not that I think I’m above this whole thing, because I don’t. I’m just in a really different place from it, a place that’s separate and slightly higher up from the place everyone else is in, but not above them.” –When I Win This Fucking Award
HISTORY IN COLOR: A BLACK AMERICAN ROMANCE ROUNDTABLE
Jane C. Hu, our most recent Gal Scientist, on the science — and pseudoscience — of the female brain.
My friend Noah Cho and I amused ourselves for two days entire by coming up with a list of Regrettable Things Our White Relatives Have Actually Said To Us, which included such gems as “But I’ve ALWAYS called you an ‘Asian princess!!!’” and “I read somewhere that hybrid people have better genes,” but, you know, transracial adoption/multiracial families = magical cures for racism and aggressive whiteness, I guess
me, forever
Have you ever wondered what Dorothy Parker would say about Tinder? Wonder no longer!
I wrote about deciding to search for my birth family.
Really feel like Mallory wrote this just for me. I thank her.
That’s it! It’s the WEEKEND, or might as well be, go have fun!!
Tags: meta, toast points
I am expecting the comments to be inundated with people wanting to see that ice-cream review parlor.
That ice cream place is AMAZING! My husband went there every summer as a kid and when he dragged me a few years ago I immediately fell in love. I highly recommend getting a waffle cone with oreo AND chocolate chip cookie dough. It is the cookiest!
Okay so there are MULTIPLE ice-cream parlors in that town and we have been to SEVERAL, which one are you thinking of? If it’s the cute old-timey one where they ring you up on the old-timey cash register, that one was sadly closed for the off-season when we were there in April.
I believe the Island Creamery has the pony tracks flavor, their ice cream has been consistently amazing for 40 years. We went there every summer when I was a kid and we took my daughter there a few years ago. The island itself is also pretty much the same except you can no longer go to the pony museum and see taxidermied Misty for $1.
taxidermied Misty
SERIOUSLY??
Yes it was in a creepy dimly lit trailer in the back of the pony museum (which also had live ponies, including Stormy).
Oh wow, are you near the Eastern Shore? I’m up in Princess Anne.
Pork in the Park is this weekend, I hope you know :l
No, we are near DC!
I have never heard of Pork in the Park but am already a fan.
It’s in Salisbury, a BBQ festival.
They also have a Cornhole tournament. I am not making this up.
roooooad trip
http://www.porkinthepark.org/
I’m thinking of Island Creamery, my husband used to go there every summer as a kid, so trying another ice cream place wasn’t really an option. But we went in the off-season too so a lot of places were closed.
That’s where we went this time, I believe! It was good, but not as cute as the old-timey place downtown-ish.
Bart: [reading from a handout] Go To Work With Your Parents Day?
Principal Skinner: [over the P.A.] Yes, Go To Work With Your Parents Day. Tomorrow you will learn by doing and apply your knowledge of fractions and gym to real-world situations.
“Take Your DAUGHTER To Work Day” always struck me as a bit condescending? Like, “It’s so cute to see girls pretending to work.”
Just me?
I am not sure what year the day was established or when exactly it changed, and maybe this is just my super-religious background showing, but I do know girls still being raised with “parent/homemaker” as the default career/assumption. I don’t know boys for whom this is the case. Of course, I also don’t know that “Take Your Daughter to Work Day” was ever really a Thing that parents participated in if they didn’t see the need to encourage their girls to think about careers outside the home.
Yeah, I was gonna comment to say I didn’t see it as “reverse sexism” so much as just condescending/assuming it’ll be a father taking a daughter to work. The idea made sense at the time — women were JUSt beginning to get into the workforce — but now that so many women work, “take your child” to work kinda makes more sense.
yeah I think there were two complaints about it, one being that it’s unnecessary in this day & age, and the other being that it was unfair to boys. So it’s the latter, obviously, that I take issue with.
ETA I think it’s cool for parents to take their kids to work if the kids want to go, don’t think it needs to be just daughters.
I’m sure this wasn’t even a blip on the radar when the decision was made, but I’m glad that the new day doesn’t invoke the gender binary, thus making it inclusive of children regardless of their gender identity/performance.
That said, I would still be totally happy with a “bring your non-cismale offspring to work day”.
Yes, totally, that’s a very good point!
My dad took me to work for “Take Your Daughter To Work Day” around 1990 or so, and it is one of my absolute favorite memories from growing up.
I remember going to work with both my parents, but not as an official Take Your Kid to Work thing! My dad was a restaurant manager and he would put me to work wiping tables (thanks Dad).
My job had this weirdo version of take your child to work day, wherein your child was not actually allowed to accompany you around during your actual job, but instead got some little refreshments and a couple of speeches about how happy the company was to have your parents work for them for like 30 minutes. I worked in a hospital, so I GUESS certain areas were not really kid-appropriate (what child doesn’t want to assist during surgery?) but plenty were, and I think they could have found a way to let kids see some actual work without compromising all the patients either.
Yeah, Google does that too. It’s basically a big party with activities and bouncy castles and festival food and all sorts of that sort of thing. Our kid is going to get a really skewed idea of what her parents do at work.
(Contrary to public perception, this is not _actually_ what Google employees do all day.)
My plan is that, when she’s old enough, I’ll do my own “take my kid to work” days.
My mom took me with her to the veterinary practice where she worked when I was like nine or ten, and I accidentally pressed the emergency alarm button behind the counter. This haunting memory is probably why I’ve never accidentally pressed one of the several emergency alarm buttons at my current workplace.
My mom took me with her to the veterinary practice where she worked when I was like nine or ten, and I accidentally pressed the emergency alarm button behind the counter. This haunting memory is probably why I've never accidentally pressed one of the several emergency alarm buttons at my current workplace.
I am still not over “hybrid people.” HYBRID PEOPLE. What the everloving fuck!
Right?? I’m not a Prius, guys!
It’s a well-known fact that centaurs and mermaids have superior genetics.
(Christ, I know right?)
Ok can someone confirm that "take your daughter to work day" is an American thing? I have never heard of it among my fellow Canadians. I did go to my mom's office on ped days if she couldn't get a babysitter or whatever. We also had a Career Day in grade 11. I visited a large animal vet clinic and watched a horse get nasal endoscopy (traumatic) and semen collecting from another horse (hilarious, the staff all gathered around to watch, gave a new meaning to a gymnastics horse).
My mother (a business executive who dressed like the protagonist in Kate Beaton’s 1980s Businesswoman Comics well into the ’90s) used to bring me to her office for Take Our Daughters to Work Day. I looked forward to it every year because she let me use her computer and it was pretty much the only time I could read X-Files fanfic without my dad hovering over my shoulder trying to figure out what was going on.
My mother (a business executive who dressed like the protagonist in Kate Beaton's 1980s Businesswoman Comics well into the '90s) used to bring me to her office for Take Our Daughters to Work Day. I looked forward to it every year because she let me use her computer and it was pretty much the only time I could read X-Files fanfic without my dad hovering over my shoulder trying to figure out what was going on.
Canadian here offering up confirmation! Take Your Daughter to Work Day was definitely A TV Thing for me when I was a kid.
That said, the mine my dad worked for had, I kid you not, a Family Safety Day in which we got a tour, stickers, games, and — memory is sketchy here — info on how safe the mines had become?
That's where we went this time, I believe! It was good, but not as cute as the old-timey place downtown-ish.
Yes, totally, that's a very good point!
I definitely remember doing it, although I can't remember what grade. Maybe grade 9? I know I went to my dad's work for a day and then when we had Career Day in gr 10 or 11 I went to my aunt's work, so we for sure had two different days. This is Ontario though so maybe the curriculum would be different for other provinces?
It's a well-known fact that centaurs and mermaids have superior genetics.
(Christ, I know right?)
This is a veeeeerrry late post but…I am also from Ontario and I never did this sort of thing. Not officially anyways. I went to my Mom's work sometimes after school to get a ride home (she worked in an office, so I just watched her type and squint at a monitor) and my Dad works at the type of place schools like to bring kids to for tours.
My beef with "take your offspring to your office" day is that it reifies the patriarchal definition of "work" as "a thing that happens in the public space, outside the confines of the private sphere or home" – in other words, work = stuff that men have traditionally done. As a mom who has full-time employment outside my home and also does a great deal of domestic labor (that I share with my spouse), I can emphatically say that my office job is significantly less taxing than the labor I perform in my home, and I feel certain that the only reason it's not culturally or linguistically recognized as "work" is because we understand the world through a patriarchal, phallogocentric construct. </rant>