I was recently having a conversation with a long time friend,  this person and I have been friends since Kindergarten,  so to say we have history is a mild understatement.  We were talking about our high school experience and how mine differed from his.  He was a 3 letter “Jock” and I was a brainy shy girl.  Yet we coexisted in the microcosm of a very small high school.  A class of 121 in a school of just over 600.

    Our main discussion revolved around how our generation contains the first women who played high school sports due in part to Title IX. In our parents generation our moms had the choice of being cheerleaders or no sport at all.  We really concluded that in small rural schools like ours high school girls embraced that and chose that rather than to be a “girly girl”.  In effect we went to the opposite extreme of our moms .  No June Cleaver vacuuming in her heels and pearls for us.  We were sneakers and jeans,  hair in ponytails and keeping up with the boys. That didn’t mean that we didn’t have our class couples,  but the power couples were both Jocks of the male and female variety.
      I played field hockey in high school,  a cross between a girly sport and good old hockey.  Dress us in kilts and arm us with sticks,  but there is nothing dangerous about that, lol.

     All in all as I look at my kids and their high school experiences,  they are still as pigeonholed as we were over 30 years ago,  but the girls in 2016 have figured out how to be a little more feminine and athletic all at the same time.  They learned from their moms,  still no vacuuming with the pearls June Cleaver,  but who the hell wants to vacuum with heels and pearls anyway?