Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where I Go Prom Dress Shopping

00:00:00.000 class is in session hey welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session now it's just me today so

00:00:10.120 you just got me today guys that's it um you're gonna have to make do and and to be honest i had

00:00:15.760 no idea next week i'm gonna talk about jordan peterson and all i can have in my head is jordan

00:00:20.440 peterson but my blood pressure incrementally ratchets up when i talk about it i'm gonna have

00:00:25.500 Stu come on. So maybe he'll bring me down. I don't know. Or he'll just drive me up and it'll

00:00:30.080 be a nightmare. But I'm going to talk about that next week. But as a precursor to that,

00:00:36.260 as a stepping stone towards the insanity that is Jordan Peterson and his ideologies and his

00:00:42.880 little fan base and, well, cult, as I like to call it, I want to talk about shopping.

00:00:50.200 Now, a lot of you are like, what the hell does that have to do? Well, I'll tell you what it has

00:00:54.500 to do. For those of you don't know me, or maybe you're just listening to me and never actually

00:00:59.720 seen me in person or ever seen my TikToks or my Instagram or whatever, you might not know

00:01:05.180 aesthetically what I look like. So let me give you a picture, okay? Picture, you know, the perfect

00:01:14.040 fade, spiky Bart Simpson-esque kind of haircut. I could admit that, but better texture and not

00:01:23.200 blonde. It's dark with some highlights naturally occurring. I do not dye. The side of my head is

00:01:29.720 full of gray hair, which is why I keep the phage so tight. I am prone to be wearing baggy jeans,

00:01:37.040 a loose fitting shirt, a backwards to the side cap with really overpriced running shoes. I think

00:01:45.460 that pretty much gives me a picture. Now, do I change my outfits accordingly depending on where

00:01:50.180 i'm going sure do i want to no i don't i don't that's that's my wheelhouse i like a solid hoodie

00:01:57.380 i like a i like a one sort of hoodie track pant suit with the right shoes i like that vibe maybe

00:02:05.300 some slides every now and then so every year uh given that so you have that picture of me in your

00:02:12.020 your head? Okay. So every year I'm a teacher and, and, and for 20 years, guys, 20 years,

00:02:20.320 I have to go to prom. Now, back in the day when I would go to prom, um, I'd wear a dress. I know

00:02:28.000 there's pictures out there somewhere. I'm sure I'd wear a dress. I do my hair a little bit more

00:02:32.680 effeminately, maybe put on a different necklace, heaven forbid, a pair of high heels. Cause I do

00:02:38.340 think they look good with a dress. And I'd go out to prom and I'd shock the hell out of everybody

00:02:43.700 and everybody would love it. And they'd comment on me and whatever. And I didn't feel bad in the

00:02:49.160 dress, guys. But I didn't feel me. And I think this is what people don't understand when it comes

00:03:00.060 to expressions of gender. I'm not going to get into gender identity. I'm not going to get into

00:03:04.520 pronouns. I'm going to put that way over there for next week when my blood pressure can handle it.

00:03:08.340 I'm going to put it just in the context of me. And in the context of me, I never felt like that

00:03:16.300 was me. But, you know, I grew up in the 90s and in the early 2000s, and there wasn't a lot of

00:03:23.840 choice. Could I have worn a suit? Absolutely. Sure. Would I have been breaking all sorts of

00:03:30.320 very thick gender norms? Yeah, absolutely I would have. I don't know if I didn't have 0.98

00:03:36.800 the confidence then, or if I didn't have a clear picture of who I was. So I didn't.

00:03:46.260 And when I didn't, every time I'd go, I feel like I was putting it on and pretending just a little

00:03:52.900 bit. Now, the interesting part was I was met with all of this, all of these accolades, right?

00:03:59.440 I mean, I'd go to, when I was in high school, I'd go to high school, I'd wear track pants and my

00:04:04.520 volleyball uniform and all of those things. And then I get dressed up one day out of the year

00:04:09.900 and people will be like, oh my God, it's so, it's amazing. And I think the accolades made me feel

00:04:18.520 good about what I wore, good enough that it drew me back to doing it again the next year.

00:04:29.520 And then when I started teaching, I did it again, and then to grad, and then the next

00:04:34.860 year, and then the next year, and for the love of God, 20 years later.

00:04:39.140 Now, it was somewhere in the last five or six years, I think, that I really said, stop.

00:04:45.220 And I'm trying to decide on the point at which I got a healthy enough identity or,

00:04:52.960 and this is quite possible, society caught up enough to give me space to develop that healthy

00:05:01.580 identity. I'll give you an example. Painting my nails. Guys, I can throw on a dress easier. I can

00:05:09.000 throw on high heels. But if you paint my nails, I am filled with discomfort, uneasiness, almost

00:05:20.820 panic i have no idea why that i need it off that i just i even thought like for those buffy fans 0.85

00:05:28.200 out there you know how spike used to wear the black nail polish it was kind of rubbed off

00:05:31.980 i thought that would be cool but even that even that just didn't sit okay with me and it made me

00:05:39.400 feel uncomfortable maybe it's because i didn't get the accolades with the nail polish you know

00:05:46.120 that came with the dress and the heels and the different style hair.

00:05:51.580 So I've been sitting here, and the last little while, I've started saying, screw it, right?

00:05:57.680 So what have I done?

00:05:58.940 Well, I've gone out and got clothes for prom that suit me closer.

00:06:04.320 There is no perfect yet.

00:06:06.620 Because as somebody who is a woman, very happily a woman,

00:06:12.140 so ideally I mean for people to understand it ideally I mean I have no desire to transition

00:06:19.480 I have no I don't feel as though I'm in the wrong body but I have a very certain aesthetic about 0.74

00:06:25.660 what clothes I like to wear and the funny part is I don't find it in the girl's side and I don't

00:06:32.040 find it in the guy's side is it more guy's side absolutely absolutely if I was going to pick a

00:06:38.220 specific kind of, you know, percentages. We'll probably be like 65, 70%. But stylistically,

00:06:48.340 I like it. But the way it fits, it fits like garbage, right? Because my shoulders aren't 0.67

00:06:52.600 very big. Heaven help me. My hips are too big. Heaven help me twice. And it doesn't fit the way

00:06:59.560 that I want it to fit. Now, could I go get a suit made? Of course I could. But who has the time and

00:07:03.840 the exceptional amounts of money. And so in my head though, guys, I still only have what I've

00:07:10.440 seen. So you have women like Julia Roberts doing that kick-ass suit with the tie, but she had the 1.00

00:07:17.580 long hair, she looked gorgeous, right? All fitted. And now you've had women like Zendaya and different 1.00

00:07:24.840 people wearing suits, but sort of feminine suits in the sense of the way that they're cut and the

00:07:30.940 their style then you have guys like harry styles chucking it all in the wind right

00:07:34.780 and i look at a guy like harry styles and i think damn he's got something he's got something there

00:07:40.940 right but those people have something because they have people around them that sort of can

00:07:47.260 curate a wardrobe that suits them and their persona and their identity whereas most of us

00:07:54.380 have to shop at H&M. Okay, fine. So I had to go shopping. And just recently I walk in and you

00:08:02.340 got to know when I go shopping for prom outfits, I know I'm not going to find what I'm looking for.

00:08:06.780 It's fine. But I'm hoping I can find pieces of it. I'm hoping I can pull pieces and sort of imagine

00:08:13.000 it. But we are all very much limited by what we've seen. And so earlier when I said, I don't

00:08:20.140 if i got the self-confidence or if the culture caught up and gave me an identity to to find

00:08:26.460 and to succumb to i don't know i don't know which one it is i do know that living in binaries

00:08:34.540 men's side women's side doesn't work for me and i don't think it works for everybody else as as

00:08:41.260 as we think it does i think we just end up making it work for us because we don't have any other

00:08:47.660 options. So I'm going to go shopping. You guys, if you saw my last TikTok, you saw what an

00:08:54.420 interesting scenario was. And I know I want a suit. So I'm past the dress stage of my,

00:08:59.700 you know, succumbing to expectation in society. And I'm all into the, okay, I'm going to get a

00:09:07.360 suit, but a guy's suit, not necessarily too boxy, too whatever. Girl's suit, not necessarily because

00:09:14.300 it's too thin. And I don't know what women's jackets do and why they cut it, cut you right 1.00

00:09:18.360 at the ass makes no sense to me because that doesn't no good to my aesthetic. I like a longer 0.95

00:09:24.280 jacket. So I walk into Yorkdale mall. Now here's the funny part now because I'm 46, because I've,

00:09:33.800 I've gotten to this place in my life where pieces of me have gotten built up, where my identity has

00:09:40.320 gotten stronger, where society has caught up, where all of these sort of pieces of the world

00:09:46.120 have come together in a collectivization methodology that allows me to be closer,

00:09:53.000 closer to who I want to be. So I walk in to Yorkdale Mall. For those who don't know,

00:09:57.460 you're from the States. Okay. Yorkdale Mall is like a very fancy mall. They have a lot of very

00:10:02.120 nice stores. So purposefully, I go to Yorkdale Mall looking like a bum. My grandma always said,

00:10:07.480 this is a great my grandma had a very very expensive ring she's talking about all the time

00:10:13.080 my grandfather got it for their like 10th anniversary she didn't wear it all the time

00:10:16.600 it was ginormous and she would wear it but she wouldn't wear it when she was going to make an

00:10:22.040 expensive purchase cars or shopping for a home or even you know shopping for more jewelry or

00:10:31.160 more expensive whatever because she said and i love my grandma for this she said i want to make

00:10:38.600 sure they're going to treat me well regardless of the expense of jewelry on my hand on my hand i

00:10:45.720 will not give them an insight into my bank account because i want to make sure they're going to treat

00:10:51.960 me well regardless i almost said irregardless heaven help me so she take it off so my grandmother

00:10:59.080 wouldn't wear that ring when she went furniture shopping or car shopping or even, you know, when 0.99

00:11:05.180 they were buying homes. And she'd want to see what she was treated like when she didn't sort of rock

00:11:12.360 that jewelry. So I have that in the back of my mind. I have no expensive rings, to be honest with

00:11:18.060 you. But what I do is I really try it out when it comes to aesthetically how I look. So picture it.

00:11:24.440 So I'm going to go to Yorkdale Mall the other day. That was hot. So I was wearing a white tank top

00:11:29.080 I don't often do that. Just so you also know, I have full tattoo sleeves on both my left and right arm. I wore track pants, and the track pants have Basquiat sort of emblems all the way down them, so it kind of looks like I have tattoos on my pants as well.

00:11:48.700 and I wore champion rainbow slides. So first of all, not the, oh, and I also wore a hat on

00:11:59.020 sideways. I just got a fresh fade, but I had a hat on sideways backwards. It was a Blue Jays

00:12:04.100 special edition. Now, some people be like, yeah, but that's all expensive stuff. That's not the

00:12:10.760 point. Here's the point. I'm going to walk into these places and I'm going to walk into both

00:12:16.480 women's and men's side of clothing. And I'm going to see how I get treated. And so I'm going to tell 0.98

00:12:22.440 you guys how I got treated because I think it's really, really important. Number one, my overall

00:12:26.500 experience was lovely. Let me say that. Let me also say this. One of the first stores I walked

00:12:33.320 into was Hugo Boss. I like to go into these stores because they are expensive, because not only was

00:12:40.920 I pushing all sorts of gender lines, I looked, I don't want to say, like, I definitely didn't

00:12:47.400 look like I had boatloads of money. And going into a store like Hugo Boss, sometimes you get

00:12:51.860 ignored, passed by. And immediately, immediately, a woman came up to me and was lovely. She said,

00:12:59.440 can I help you with anything? And I explained myself in about, you know, three sentences. She

00:13:04.080 goes, let's give it a go. I like this. This is a great challenge. We should have more things that

00:13:08.520 like you, you know, so she got me a suit and we tried it on in the girl's side. She goes, 0.85

00:13:13.100 the guy's side has nothing fun right now. It really is quite boring. I don't think you're

00:13:16.920 going to like it. We can try some on, but I think you're going to be more happy with maybe this cut

00:13:21.400 because we have some longer jackets, but they only had one style. It was orange. I still don't know

00:13:25.900 if I can rock orange guys. Go check out that TikTok if you want though. Tell me what you think. 0.99

00:13:30.740 But she was absolutely lovely. I didn't feel for a minute that the way that I looked or the way I

00:13:37.600 presented or what I wanted, or even my lack of money, you know, sitting in a place where I was

00:13:43.760 looking at a fairly expensive suit. She didn't judge that for an instant. And you can feel that,

00:13:51.060 right? There's lots of people say, can I help you? And you're like, yeah, they really want to help me.

00:13:54.900 No, this was not. Hugo Boss in Yorkdale Mall, shout out. And I didn't buy the suit. So this

00:14:01.160 isn't, you know, propaganda for them. So I left. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to go check out some

00:14:06.220 other stores. And I went into a few different places. A guy's store, I'm trying to remember

00:14:12.620 the name of it right now. For some reason, I can't fashion the name. It's a relatively expensive

00:14:17.080 store again, but most of their sizes are too big. He was okay. He was pretty okay with me.

00:14:23.540 Wasn't too excited about trying to find different things. But again, I don't know if it was a gender

00:14:29.180 thing or if it was a money thing, because again, I look like a bum. I went into Banana Republic

00:14:34.400 And I got a very lovely, very lovely young lady who helped me find kind of a Harry Potter-esque kind of vibe.

00:14:45.140 And all the while trying to find more funky things.

00:14:48.600 She did a really good job of, they were still women's clothes, but she did a really good job of trying to find pieces she thought might be more stylistically at least cooler.

00:15:01.940 maybe a little bit more masculine. And again, lovely. What I find interesting about my shopping

00:15:10.960 experience is how many people, even though I present the way I do, never walked me over to

00:15:17.880 the guy's side. Really, never did. Just decided that that wasn't an option. I eventually went

00:15:27.280 to Zara. Zara, by the way, I love stuff from Zara. I love the guy side from Zara, but it's,

00:15:32.860 it's a level of chaos in Zara that I just can't, it's, it's hard for me to, to placate the chaos

00:15:38.960 where the people and whatever, and that particular Zara, I've had issues with where I've wanted to

00:15:45.360 get changed before. Like when I got grabbed guy's clothes, for example, I walk into the guy's

00:15:50.440 change room. For no reason, then I'm on the guy's side. And a couple of times I've gotten the,

00:15:57.700 you know, oh, the girl's change rooms over there. I'm like, yeah, A, there's a lineup or B,

00:16:02.580 but I have guys closed. So what do you want me to do here? That didn't happen this time.

00:16:07.680 And they were okay, but more dismissive, I think. More like you could feel a bit of a vibe,

00:16:13.560 which is weird. And now I'm starting to feel like it's weird when I get a vibe, when I'm met with an

00:16:19.820 energy that doesn't sort of support that kind of diversity or gender-bending kind of stuff.

00:16:29.360 I guess when I look around too, I find that we're expected to constantly fit in a trope,

00:16:37.940 right? We're constantly expected. We're more so okay with you shopping, girls shopping in the

00:16:45.060 guy's side, guy shopping in the girl's side, but that's it. Those are your options. You know? So 0.79

00:16:50.760 I pulled the guy aside. I said, listen, this is the vibe I'm looking for. Like some of the guy's

00:16:54.540 stuff is cool, but here I want this kind of pop of color, or I want this vibe, or I want something

00:16:59.680 more unique. And guys tend to be boring as heck. And he's kind of like, yeah, we don't have

00:17:04.420 anything. But like, and then that's it. No, granted they're getting paid next to nothing

00:17:09.500 and it sucks working at retail. But part of that, I'm wondering if it comes from

00:17:14.940 what I should be wearing and shouldn't be wearing or, or, and this is interesting,

00:17:21.480 we're still stuck in the binaries. It's not so much that anybody has a problem with me

00:17:27.100 dressing like a guy. It's just that they can't conceive of something greater than those two

00:17:33.460 categories. And this is where I want to live. This is what I want to talk about.

00:17:39.500 How do we pull away from that kind of binary? Because especially in clothing, it is so, so confining and limiting in a space where clothes are supposed to be, everybody talks about how clothes are supposed to be a reflection of your identity.

00:18:01.100 we're only supposed to have like narrowly defined identities and you can either fit over here or

00:18:07.680 over there and everybody's all upset that people are pushing gendered pronouns and and wanting to

00:18:14.240 to sort of pick up the other whatever the other is or or even gender neutral pronouns

00:18:20.800 and why well because we've only given people two options

00:18:24.880 you know now you hear kids younger kids using they them pronouns using non-binaries which is

00:18:31.840 amazing but that's new because still we're saying it's an either or it's a he or a she

00:18:39.460 it's the guy side or the girl side and then there's all of this limitation found within that

00:18:45.880 dynamic and i'm starting to feel very constrained by it now again i dress however i want to dress

00:18:53.600 guys, but that's taken me 46 freaking years, 46 years. And I don't know if I'm perfectly

00:19:02.800 comfortable with it all the time. I do know that I still feel constrained by side A or B. So I

00:19:09.660 start to sort of start imagining or envisioning what I would create if I could create clothes, 0.99

00:19:15.400 how I would diversify them, how I would get rid of, you know, guys, girls altogether. In my head, 0.96

00:19:22.160 I'm like, why not have a gender neutral store? Why does it have to be a guys and girls side?

00:19:33.020 Now, there are realities of bodies, right? My hips, for the love of God. I got big hips. I wish

00:19:43.020 they were a little more narrow, but I got big hips. It's what I came with, right? So I got big

00:19:48.260 hips. The kind of pants that I need, as opposed to the kind of pants guys need, those change.

00:19:54.880 But can't we just have a different kind of pant? I'm just wondering. There's lots of women I know

00:20:00.820 that don't have big butts and don't have big hips, right? So stylistically and aesthetically, 1.00

00:20:07.300 they suit a kind of pant that isn't necessarily male. And the same goes for men who could have

00:20:15.640 more of a hip or a bum. You know, I'm going to guess a hockey player, they always have kind of

00:20:20.380 big butts. Hockey players got to shop for jeans, totally separate places. So I started thinking 0.99

00:20:26.780 about all of these things and all of the, all of these constraints. I'm not going to tell you what

00:20:30.540 I ended up with in my, in my outfit, uh, cause I haven't quite come to terms with it yet, but I'm

00:20:35.420 going to. And then I started reflecting on how long is it going to take before we give that space

00:20:44.600 to kids we're fighting so hard about what they wear and where they go and how they talk and what

00:20:50.300 they do and we're all angry about all of the pronoun stuff that we're going to talk about

00:20:55.060 next week and all we're like where are the categories anymore and everything's so blurred

00:20:59.120 but why do we care if we really want our kids to have true authentic identities don't we want to

00:21:09.380 get out of their way? Don't we want to? And I mean, maybe we don't. And maybe it's time a lot

00:21:17.460 of people admitted that. They don't want their kids to have a true authentic identity. They want

00:21:23.420 an authentic identity as long as it conforms to the majority of social norms and gets them a good

00:21:30.200 paying job and the family and the kids and the fence and the right Audi in the driveway. I don't

00:21:35.020 know maybe that's what they're looking for i'm wondering if we get out of their way more me too

00:21:44.700 everybody if we get out of their way more on something as basic as the way you get to express

00:21:53.920 your gender maybe we will have more healthy more amazing more well-rounded young people who can

00:22:03.720 then focus their focus, their energies on doing amazing things in this world, rather than constantly

00:22:10.300 trying to figure out how to navigate, how to fit in, how to break those, how to fight those.

00:22:16.840 You know, when I was a younger teacher, we, I, I would fight for stupid things because I was 0.99

00:22:22.620 young and dopey. Let me give you an example. We used to have this hat rule at school, 0.99

00:22:27.960 no hats in school right and i would collect their hats and i would string them up on my rafters i

00:22:34.520 had a really high ceiling it was a bit of a game and it was a bit fun but when when we make these

00:22:42.120 rules i i am now thinking let's not just think of rules we make for making rules sick wearing a hat

00:22:50.920 inside is very 1945. What do I care? If people are worried about them cheating, guys, trust me,

00:22:59.400 for the love of God, there's so many more ways to cheat. They don't cheat with hats.

00:23:04.120 But that hat thing, right? For years, I battled it. And I think about that hat

00:23:09.280 because I think about it metaphorically. Do we have rules, like no hats inside,

00:23:16.560 just to have rules, just to say that is a rule, follow that rule. That is a sign of respect. If

00:23:25.580 I heard that one more time, I was going to lose my mom. I have since, I mean, it's been 10 years

00:23:29.640 since I've given a crap about a hat, but I'm wondering how much time we waste, how much time 0.61

00:23:38.160 and battles we throw down with. Because everybody who's a parent on here or a teacher on here knows 0.92

00:23:44.440 that it's a series of battles with kids and not in a bad way just like there's a constant power

00:23:50.600 struggle going back and forth you've heard the term you gotta pick your battles well so do teachers

00:23:56.520 and what the hell am i having a hat battle for or telling a young woman not to wear a tank top 0.58

00:24:03.160 or the crap that's going on in ottawa ontario right now and telling them to 0.94

00:24:07.640 bend over so i can see how short their shorts are what is wrong with us 0.98

00:24:11.720 us what are the battles what battles are we having why are we having them and and more importantly

00:24:19.320 what is the victory getting us because i have a lot of people on the right you know saying like

00:24:28.160 freedom freedom freedom if they say the word freedom anymore it just stops having meaning

00:24:32.500 like if you just keep saying the word again and again again again what do they want freedom for

00:24:37.700 because i don't think they want freedom i think what they want is they want to

00:24:45.280 block a diversity a diversification of that freedom right don't talk about gender let the

00:24:53.400 kids be free but we've been talking about gender forever guys we've been telling young boys and

00:24:58.020 young girls what to wear we've been we've been questioning young girls aesthetic and their tank

00:25:03.580 tops forever we've been ripping off the hats we've been constantly reinforcing these ideas we have

00:25:13.020 been teaching them time after time after time a very particular way of existing a very and i use

00:25:20.300 the term conservative not in a party sense but in a in a basic kind of principled way a conservative

00:25:29.020 mentality when it comes to education when it comes to the lessons they need to be learning

00:25:33.580 You know, it's hysterical. We spend all this time fighting about hats, but we don't fight about turning in late assignments.

00:25:42.040 Or we spend all this time talking to parents about what I can and can't say, but yet the parent consistently will maybe throw some lies down to protect their kid when they're late so they don't actually have to face consequence.

00:25:55.340 all of this all of this is to protect a very particular way of living a very particular way

00:26:06.140 of educating our youth and now it's coming up against this flood of diversity and that's what

00:26:13.040 they don't all of a sudden that's what they don't all of a sudden it's a freedom issue

00:26:16.480 no it's always been a freedom issue it's always been teachers have always had significant control

00:26:25.320 of what goes on in the classroom.

00:26:26.600 And if you want to know what's going on in the classroom,

00:26:28.140 for the love of God, talk to your child.

00:26:30.380 But now when they start challenging

00:26:33.160 traditional ideals and values,

00:26:36.060 and I hate the word tradition

00:26:37.020 because again, it's like the hat thing, guys.

00:26:40.620 I don't stand by tradition because it's tradition.

00:26:43.920 I stand by tradition because today

00:26:46.120 you can prove to me it has value.

00:26:49.260 And it has value.

00:26:50.480 If it has value, I'll keep it.

00:26:52.800 If it doesn't, I won't.

00:26:55.320 the same with the hat does it have value is it a fight worth having and what is the end goal of

00:27:03.000 the fight because if end goal of the fight is just control then what the hell are we doing

00:27:08.260 right people say i just want it and i'll get these comments all the time is it you know on

00:27:14.640 a teacher on social media never in a teacher in real life but oh you're just trying to control

00:27:19.120 kids no you're missing the point i'm trying to give them options i don't need to teach them

00:27:24.440 christianity i teach them 12 world religions they can choose and i teach the 12 with the same

00:27:32.040 veracity and passion and interest across the board let them choose you individually as parents might

00:27:41.520 be the kind of parent who say no we are this so they will learn this and everything else is is

00:27:47.440 attempting to infiltrate that freedom no you've missed it you never gave your kid freedom you

00:27:53.340 gave your kid limits. You gave your kid the end result rather than letting them choose.

00:28:00.100 Same with gender identity. Same with the clothes they wear, right? Same with the makeup they choose 0.89

00:28:07.180 to put on or not put on. I want to give them space for that. Isn't that more freedom? Because

00:28:14.500 I'm confused at what freedom means anymore. I mean, you know, the F Trudeau signs don't seem

00:28:19.960 like yay freedom to me i know y'all didn't like a mask mandate but besides that and so i start to

00:28:27.640 look at education from a fairly a very different perspective and that perspective has me questioning

00:28:35.800 what fight should we have how should we have the fights and more importantly what kind of

00:28:41.480 environment do we want to create whereby our kids, our youth, get to look around a room

00:28:49.640 and decide from the variances of culture and religion and gender identities and perspectives

00:28:59.500 and ideologies, they have all of this diversity all the way around them. And then they get to

00:29:04.600 decide which things speak to them. I think, look, you can't make an argument against that.

00:29:12.340 The only argument against that is fear. That's simple. And that's what a lot of people are

00:29:18.620 running on nowadays, fear, right? What you're afraid of, what you don't want,

00:29:26.580 what you're trying to control, what you're trying to limit, fear. I had a little girl the other day

00:29:34.260 when i was out in the uh i was in uh metro it's like a grocery store in toronto i was at metro

00:29:41.140 and a lot of little girls will look at me and and around six or seven they're fascinated

00:29:46.460 and this little girl's with her mom and we're shopping in the same aisle and i'm focused on

00:29:51.680 i don't know captain crunch or whatever i was focused on and this little girl i can hear her

00:29:55.100 whisper to mom she goes hey mom is that a girl and the mom goes yes honey that's a girl you can

00:30:01.840 tell she's like I don't want I think that's it's adorable yes that's that's a girl and then the

00:30:08.540 kids paused and she I could feel her looking at me and I could kind of catch her eye she's staring

00:30:13.840 and staring and staring it's like into my soul guys and as she's staring a few seconds later

00:30:22.180 she then looks at her mom pulls her down and says then why can't I get my hair cut like that

00:30:27.540 kids want options kids want diversity kids want to express themselves in different ways 0.93

00:30:40.340 now that mom's quick response was honey but we love your long hair i can't put it in a ponytail

00:30:45.300 or pigtails come on now we just and then she shuffled her off that's the mom wasn't being

00:30:49.900 mean the mom wasn't being anything horrible it's just that's it that's it's it's so incredibly

00:30:56.800 simple that kid figured out well if she's a girl but her hair looks like that then my hair can look

00:31:04.740 like that and you start to realize the importance of people being visible to young people diversity

00:31:11.820 being an option to young people the idea that their identity that little girl's identity now

00:31:18.560 is always going to be in the back of their head knowing full well girls can cut their hair short

00:31:22.480 and it is fine when she gets old enough maybe she will or maybe you know society will done a 1.00

00:31:29.000 significant enough of a job in order to control that make sure she keeps long hair for whatever

00:31:35.660 reason society has for that but all of this is to talk about something very simple and very hard at

00:31:44.480 the same time. If we want our kids to be able to find their true identity, we have to give them

00:31:53.560 options on the table. I don't ever want kids to be in harm's way in any way, shape, or form. And

00:32:01.500 cutting your hair, guys, well, that's just not harm's way, is it? Wearing baggy pants is just

00:32:07.620 not harm's way and i think by giving that kind of freedom what we allow for is kids not to be

00:32:15.140 badly you want to you want to change some issues surrounding mental health get out of their way

00:32:21.220 stop telling them who they are stop limiting who they who they how they get to express themselves

00:32:26.660 who they get to become because every time we do that we constrict their growth and as we constrict

00:32:33.780 their growth and they know there's something that they're missing, they either have to pack it away

00:32:40.540 or they have to fight. Why do we want them to do either? Because we want our kids to grow up healthy

00:32:48.780 and brave and strong and independent. And if that's true, if that is true,

00:32:55.520 then you got to get out of their way and let them do it.

00:32:58.640 That's it for today, guys. Throw any questions you have in the comments section below. I would

00:33:06.360 love to hear your comments. I would love to hear your stories. I would love for this to be a

00:33:11.900 continuation of a discussion based around how do we build healthier, amazing, fuller potential in

00:33:22.200 a person, how do we get out a kid's way? Because I really do think that's the prime directive. And

00:33:28.480 yes, that was a Star Trek quote. Thank you guys so much for hanging out. I will see you

00:33:33.640 next Tuesday. Same bat time, same bat station. Have a great week, guys. Dismissed.

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - May 17, 2022

The One Where I Go Prom Dress Shopping

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