Free-Range Knitter by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Author:Stephanie Pearl-McPhee [Pearl-Mcphee, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4494-0015-6
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing LLC
Published: 2010-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

What It Looks Like

I was knitting a pair of pale pink baby booties on the bus when an older gentleman sat down beside me, looked carefully at me and then at what I was knitting, and then smiled warmly and congratulated me on the forthcoming blessed event. I was a little startled, and I think I may have audibly gasped, as for a single heartbeat I was afraid I’d been so busy that I was in advanced state of pregnancy and hadn’t noticed yet. When I caught my breath, I thanked him for his kindness and let it go. I suppose I could have corrected him, but I thought he might be embarrassed, it would have taken up happy knitting time, and I’m finally old enough to let other people’s mistakes go sometimes. It actually doesn’t matter whether a guy on the bus thinks I’m knocked up as long as I know I’m not. As it was, I returned his smile, turned to thinking and knitting, and thought about him.

I feel that I know why he said that, and I know the gentleman is not unkind. He is at worst ignorant and probably merely a victim of a well-worn cliché. It certainly hasn’t been very long since a woman of a childbearing age knitting a pair of baby booties was a reasonable social cue. Women, especially well-behaved ones who were going to be very good mothers, all flirted with knitting baby booties. It’s how Wilma told Fred she was pregnant on the Flintstones, for crying out loud, and a moment like that has to leave a cultural echo, whether it’s a little insulting or not. It’s the way stereotypes are born, and knitting has more than its fair share of them.

Now, I am not naive. (Or perhaps I should say I’m not very naive. I have to cop to it a little since I was stunned just a few years ago to discover that the woman down the street who keeps finding things that “fell off a truck” really is actually a criminal, not just someone who has an odd and remarkable talent for finding traffic accidents littered with abandoned merchandise.) As much as stereotypes about knitters (or anybody, really, though I am probably guilty of a few) bug the daylights out of me, I know that they must have come about for a reason. Stereotypes are usually born of a common belief, and common beliefs come about because a majority (or at least a bunch) of the people that you’re forming an idea about fit within your concept. The guy thought I was pregnant because a lot of women learn to knit when they’re pregnant, and that’s true. I know lots of women who think of knitting for the very first time when they are expecting a baby. It’s like you’re making one thing (the baby) and you think, “Wow. This making stuff sure is satisfying. Maybe I could make a whole bunch of stuff, maybe I could even make stuff for the stuff I’m making,” and you’re off to the races.

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