All About Boys
by Margaret Rose Kent
Ithaca College
Margaret Kent is a senior Communication Management and Design major with a concentration in Corporate Communication and a minor in Writing at Ithaca College. She has been recording her life by journaling since she was seven years old and continues to keep a current journal.
Before I start, I want to take notice of the common theme on hard-left social media that as women we need to be careful not to “center” men in our lives. The term androcentrism is defined as “the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing a masculine point of view at the center of one's world view, culture, and history, thereby culturally marginalizing femininity.” I think it is important to recognize that choosing to value individual men, or talking about our personal experiences with men, is not inherently androcentrism. In fact, I would argue that discussing personal experiences with men can have the opposite effect, and is essential for reflecting on the presence of androcentrism in our lives.
This leads me to one of the first journal entries I ever wrote, discussing the right ways to interact with boys.
Section 1: Innocence
How to Act With Boys:
June 2008
Age 8
Don’t talk before he doe’s
Don’t be shy
Play with evreyone
Be nice
Be calm
Have fun
Never lose hope
It is easy to see from this short entry that my interest in boys developed from a young age. Spelling errors and all, eight-year-old me wanted to make sure that I acted the right way when interacting with boys. Strangely enough, “don’t talk before he does” is promptly followed by “don’t be shy”, which seem to directly contradict each other. It’s as if I hadn’t quite decided whether boys like loud girls or quiet girls, so I was attempting to be both at the same time. It feels like a punch in the stomach now to read those lines. “Don’t talk before he does.” Why did I think that? Why did I think the boys should lead all the conversations? At 8 years old? I wish I could go back and ask small me why she wrote those things.
For number 7, I had written, “Never lose hope” and then scribbled it all out with my pen, perhaps with the realization of how depressing it sounded. I vaguely remember writing this entry. The title was originally, “How to talk to (insert name of my crush)”, but I was scared of someone reading my diary and finding out who I liked, so I crossed it all out and replaced it with the ambiguous “boys”. In fact, in middle school, I was so incredibly paranoid about someone reading my diary that I sewed the key to it into the lace slip that one of my glass dolls wore. My friends could try all they wanted, but they’d never get to my secrets.
Section 2: Denial
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Age 11
Dear Journal,
I am at my grandma and grandpa’s house in Massachusetts. We had Christmas down here. I overheard my mom talking on the phone. I gathered the information that her friend, Jessica, has a 90% chance of coming up to our house and staying at the B&B down the road. That would be A-ok with me if it was just her, but it’s not. She has 5 boys. One that is about 4, 2 that are about 6, and 2 that are about 11! A romantic kind of girl,* like my friend Alexa, would probably think “Oh, five boys! I might die from excitement!” Or she would think, “I hope one of them is cute.” The thing is, I might die too, only not from excitement, from being annoyed.
Extremely mad (with my mom),
Maggie
*I am NOT a romantic kind of girl
All throughout middle school, I considered liking boys as a primary form of female weakness. My friends had crushes left and right, as did I, but I continued to lie for years about having feelings for anyone. I wanted to be the heartless emo girl, who looked down on other girls for having feelings. I bought snapbacks and hung out with my friend’s brothers, trying to gain approval for how much I “wasn’t like the other girls”. I pretended to read Marvel comics and vowed to learn how to fix cars when I was older. The obvious defining characteristics of men. In my free time, my friends and I would write stories, casting ourselves as fictional characters based on the Percy Jackson series. I was always the daughter of Hades who dressed in all-black, while my friend was Zeus’s daughter, with golden hair and a white dress. The reality, of course, was not so simple. My biological father was not Hades, but an organic orchard owner with a controlling personality and strong German roots. He was never married to my mother and lost the custody battle for me due to his obvious mental illness. I was three then. He gave me a terrifying plastic yellow bunny as a gift, an attempt to connect with me, and on my way home in the car with my grandma I said, “I don’t ever wanna see Papa again.”
My friend lived in a camper in the middle of a field with her four other family members. Her blonde hair lay straight on either side of her head, but the back was matted into dreadlocks. When I went over to her house we would sleep outside on the grass under a blanket and run to use the outhouse in the morning, when the chickens got too close for comfort. I never minded one bit. I too had grown up with outhouses and chickens as the norm. My friend was not Zeus’s daughter. Her father had dreadlocks down to his waist and went to jail for refusing to pay for something he picked up off a craigslist ad. He wasn’t there for very long, and when he got out, her whole family moved away. Poor white America displays itself in the strangest ways. I was poor, white, America. Kids like me didn’t go to college, they wore camouflage dresses to prom, got pregnant senior year, and plastered confederate flags to the sides of their vehicles. My math teacher once sent a boy to the office for wearing a confederate flag hoodie. My choices for boys were less than subpar.
Section 3: Dating
When I was 14, I started dating my friend’s ex-boyfriend, who she broke up with when she moved away. She was living at my house when it happened, and she closed herself in the guest room and listened to Tove Lo for two days straight. The same song over and over again. I remember being so annoyed with her for playing that stupid song. Why was she so bent out of shape over a dumb boy? I proceeded to get even more bent out of shape about the same exact boy. As any white girl would tell you, dating your friend’s ex is breaking “girl code” and is grounds for exile from your girl group. Perhaps even one of Dante’s circles of Hell is reserved for people like me. People who always break “girl code.”
Monday, December 22, 2014 9:42 p.m.
Age 14
I’m dating Cole now. It all happened pretty quickly and now Lillian is really mad at me. She says that she wants to forget about me because she can’t trust me anymore and I broke my promise to her, but I never thought I would ever like Cole, much less go out with him. I never lied to her my feelings just changed. I don’t understand why it all has to be like this. Things are too difficult and complicated. I don’t know what to do I feel as if I just keep hurting people and I don’t know how to stop. I was upset and I told Cole that he should start being a scumbag because if he was a scumbag then he wasn’t worth me losing my best friend and I regret saying that so much it was mean and he doesn’t really deserve to be yelled at. I just want to go to sleep and have this really perfect dream where everything is warm with people and food and everyone would just get along. It would be perfect and I would just stay there and sleep forever. And I wouldn’t have any more problems. Cole said that would be a bad idea because I would never get to find out what happens in the future. But what if the future is horrible? What if I lose Cole next? And then Michelle? And Alexa? If that’s the future, then I don’t want it.
Maggie
It’s easy to read this entry and think “why is she complaining about a problem that she created?” I often think that too when I re-read it. I had strong opinions about Cole before I started dating him. I thought he was annoying and stupid and undeserving of my attention. But the fact remained that he was the only boy who had ever shown me any sort of special attention, and once I realized this, I was terrified to let it go. After only less than a day of dating, I expressed my worries about losing him.
Speaking of the future, I now have the convenient ability to tell my past self exactly what happened with all those friends.
Michelle came out as trans and now goes by Michael. He’s currently getting a degree in Physics and Mathematics. I am no longer friends with him, but I remember the times we played with Harry Potter legos together and I always made lemon bars for his birthday because they were his favorite.
Alexa came out as bisexual (as did I). We are no longer friends but are on good terms.
Lillian moved and is attending college for Marine Biology. We keep in touch loosely.
Cole still lives in our hometown, attempting to get a degree of his own. He checks in once in a while to see how I’m doing.
Cole and I dated for 2 and a half more years after that journal entry in 2014. Our relationship, quite frankly, was terrible. He was emotionally abusive and I was unequipped to handle a romantic relationship. Here’s a short excerpt from an entry in 2015.
January 25, 2015
Sunday 4:23 p.m.
On Thursday night we were texting and the topic of sex came up and I said I kinda wanted to wait until I had graduated from high school and that is about three years from now. He said that he wouldn’t wait three years and that kind of made me feel like I wasn’t worth the wait and as if he didn’t actually care about me.
This wouldn’t be the first or last time Cole would threaten to break up with me if I didn’t have sex with him. Still, I waited until I was 16, and at 17, I dumped him a week after starting freshman year of college.
Section 4: Role Models
The idea of having good male role models in any young child’s life is often emphasized. My adoptive dad was cold and unfeeling, although not cruel, he did not provide me a good example of a healthy way for men to show love.
After my biological father lost the custody battle in 2003, I did not hear from him again until I was 15 years old and he wrote me a letter. A collection of letters, rather. His scrawlings were of the type you would find on a mental asylum wall, even though I know they’re called “hospitals” instead of “asylums” now. Not that he would be able to afford a mental hospital. Not that he would even go if he could afford it.
I find it hard to paint an accurate picture of Howard. He escapes my grasp like melting snow or puffs of smoke from our chimney. Starlings always find their way into our chimney in the summer. They come out the bottom, out of place, and covered in soot. Invasive and unknowing, they try to use our chimney as a place to nest. They are not unlike Howard in this respect. He may not nest in chimneys, but I have never met a person who has erased their own sense of belonging quite like he has. Erased the value of connections with others, staying stuck steadfast in his own dated belief systems.
He talked constantly about the importance of blood, saying that I could never separate myself from my heritage and my purpose. My purpose was, as he stated, “To bring us life again”. Essentially, my purpose as a woman was to have children and continue the family line. I was angry. He could not see me as my own person but instead considered me tied to him by my duties as a daughter. These are made-up duties, I argued. Built upon years of patriarchy and female submission. He did not appreciate my contradiction of his ideas.
I have a right to “preach” to you. Bear in mind miss bratty, you would not exist at all were it not for values manifest in “me”. The product of my thought is you. Show some respect: The ancient sword is the reason of your being. Respect my voice, not me…. I fight for you from the dead for life not got death. Have you lied? You are not a liar, because of your life! I don’t care about what you’ve done. Leave it behind you and do better. Leave behind you your stupid study in school and dedicate yourself to something real, your unborn interest. My life’s voice spoken to you!
Howard was not used to women arguing with him. He had so much stamina when it came to arguing with people, that typically the other party would give up with pure exhaustion. After they broke up, he called my mother’s phone so much she had to change her number. When he drove 15 hours from Maine to Western NY to my Grandmother’s house where she was living, they contacted the police to ask for a restraining order. The police would not grant it, as Howard had not “done” anything yet. He is indeed, a determined man.
I too, can be a determined man. I argued with Howard for 8 hours over text that day. He got so angry with me that he finally told me never to contact him again. He said,
You are no daughter of mine. Do not bother me again, I mean it.
I am inclined to grant his request.
Section 5: Redemption
Talking about men is so much more complicated than talking about overarching patriarchy and sexism. The men I have experienced all react to the patriarchy in different ways. Some embrace its values as inherent truths, some verbally reject those values while continuing the male vs female stereotypes. Some who have been raised on patriarchal values go on to reject those values, due to their emotional vulnerability and willingness to learn.
More than it is about men, it is about me and my struggles with self-love and femininity, trying to find a place for who I want to be in a world that still has so many ideas of what a woman should be like. What does it mean to be a woman who writes in a man’s world? I have no answer.
Friday, September 18, 2020
My poetry professor wants us to write for an hour every day. I’m sick of him. I’ve been writing for years and my writing still isn’t any good. I don’t know who I think I’m kidding, trying to take a poetry class, pretending like I know the first thing about anything. The whole room is tipping a little. Tell me, what are you waiting for? To stand on the bow of a ship so grand and spread your arms to the sea? Or maybe for the brilliant sunset to reach out its warm rays and eat you whole. Or maybe you just want to sit on the ground and watch the world stop. To make the trees stop breathing and the earth stop whispering in your ear. For the glitter you vomited into the bath to cover your cheeks and fill your mouth. Choking on the elegance of a life unlived. Maybe the blood that pools at your feet pours willingly out of all of us. A collective of pain and sorrow, steeped carefully in my mug. The notes on your piano have long since ceased to echo back from the void I left you in. Perhaps I should have thrown myself in as well. Every time I rip my skin off it grows back so quickly. I’m begging you, please, when will it stop? The snake will swallow us all eventually. Wrapping its golden scales around my legs and up my neck. Slithering down my throat, coiling himself into a ball in my stomach. Did I swallow him when I wasn’t looking? Or is he eating me slowly, from the inside out? I think it will be the latter. Is this what you wanted? Is this enough?
Am I enough? Are my feelings enough for you? Am I good enough for you?
Maggie
To be a woman who writes in a world of men who write is to be insufficient. It is the feeling of reaching out, of creating something you are proud of, just to be told you should have used different words or chosen a different topic. It is to be told these things, no matter what topic you choose to write about, no matter what words you decide to use.
I am so grateful that despite these many experiences with men, I have managed to find many wonderful, kind, emotional men to include in my life. By educating myself about healthy modes of expression, I am able to surround myself with people of all genders who value and support me.
It is only recently that I have attempted to take control over my writing, insisting that the words I write are the ones I intended and that the things I create were meant to turn out that way. Past insecurities left me apologizing and then scrambling to make my work a good fit for stinging criticisms. It has taken me a long time to realize that my work should be built on the things that I value, not the values of others, and certainly not the values of one man.
I said things that way on purpose.
I used those words on purpose.
Interview With The Author
1. What was your inspiration for this piece?
My inspiration for this piece came when I decided to re-read my old journals, dating back to 2006/2007. I was interested and sometimes shocked at how I talked about boys in relation to myself. I wanted to write this personal essay to show how my viewpoints have changed, as well as reflect on the presence of men in my life.
2. What is your creative process?
I always listen to music when I write, the genre changes with my mood. If I'm not listening to music, I write outside. I find that sitting outside, or more specifically, in the woods, helps me feel more creative. Freewriting is usually how I start all my work, and then I go back and edit after I've gotten all my thoughts onto paper. I also have a few close friends and family that always read things over and give me feedback.
3. What are some influences on your artistic process?
Other poets, such as Sylvia Plath and all of my peers have been huge influences. Song lyrics also play a large role in a lot of my poetry. I especially like to listen to The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Billie Eilish while I write. Memoirs such as The Glass Castle and Educated were extremely impactful and showed me how truly wonderful nonfiction can be. Communion by bell hooks was the inspiration for this specific piece.
4. Is there anything more you’d like our readers/viewers to know about you or your work?
I run my own knitting business, @theauthenticsheep on Instagram and Etsy.
Editors’ Comments
— "All About Boys" is a structurally experimental piece that dives to the core of how patriarchal expectations poison both men and women while centering the feminine perspective powerfully. Through memories and diary entries, the reader sees how the shadow of misogyny loomed over Kent and shaped not only her, but the society around her. The analytical components are profound, and shed light on both subtle and outright elements of sexual and gender based oppression.
— What's more revealing of a person's inner-most thoughts than them sharing journal entries they wrote at the age of 8? "All About Boys" fluidly interlaces the thoughts of past and present, embodying some of the most critical aspects of creative non fiction: being vulnerable with the reader while saying the hardest thing(s) on the page. Margaret Kent uses their "words on purpose," (un)knowingly encouraging the audience to do the same.