Lost and Found! The Little Prince...

While going through old newsroom footage about former teacher strikes in Minneapolis, to pair historical footage with news of today, guess who was spotted back in the day on the street supporting his teachers at Lincoln Junior High School in 1970?  Prince Rodgers "Skipper" Nelson.

“I think they should get a better education too cause, um,and I think they should
 get some more money ‘cause they’re working extra hours for us and all that stuff,” he says.

You look at that face at 10 or 11 years old -- he was competitively playing his music by then, friends said -- and wonder:  what if his parents hadn't kicked him out the house a few years later to live with friends? What might have been lost had this little one been labeled and reassigned as a girl-child for his musical interests, small body and "feminine" ways?

Femininity doesn't make a female any more than masculinity makes a male.  Those are the dominant gender expressions of sex, but what is lost artistically or collectively in a society when we try to physically alter what is, or worse -- redefine the sexes to fit rigid gender stereotypes?  A child of the 70s, I learned:  of course girls can play sports and build!  Boys can sing and dance and even wear pink! 

What happened to the idea of supporting your children for who they are, helping them carve out a space for themselves in the world via education, and not carving up their bodies to fit society's ideas of what a boy or girl child is?

Prince played on his school basketball teams in junior high -- he was small but good! -- but clearly music, not sports, was his passion.  From a religious and musical family, Prince was a gender bender who played with his sexuality in his art from the start...

What would have been lost had we thought God made a mistake with this child, and physically altered him?  He would never have had the career he had, and it is doubtful that art would have emerged as it did.

Hey?  Leave those kids alone...  Ain't nothing wrong with the way they were created.  We just need a much broader definition of the roles we assign each gender.  We don't need to fix anyone physically to fit a different slot.

Video and voice at the link.