Georgie Porgie pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry,
When the boys came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away This bit of doggerel came into my head while doing a job around the house, one of those nursery rhymes from my childhood. I’d rather it hadn’t come into my head, but it wouldn’t go away so I started to analyse it, and realised with a shock just how much it had affected me.
It should have been just a piece of nonsense verse, but in my childhood world, full of toxic attitudes to sexuality, it became a little fragmentation grenade of poisonous messages:
- Girls don’t like being kissed, it makes them cry.
- It’s bad to make girls cry, and Georgie was really awful for doing it.
- Georgie wasn’t like the other good boys who wouldn’t dream of making girls cry.
- If he was “normal” he would be running round with the other boys playing football, not messing with girls.
- If the other boys caught him he’d be “for it”.
- Georgie was too much of a coward to stand up for himself, so had to run away.
- Georgie was probably fat from eating too many puddings and pies.
Since I was quite chubby myself I just knew that this rhyme was talking about me. In this and other similarly innocuous ways were decades of sexual hang-ups conceived. These early messages can be damnably hard to dislodge, and despite all the evidence to the contrary there’s still a little corner of my mind that can’t believe that girls like kissing, let alone being made to cry.
This may seem an awful lot to pin on a harmless little nursery rhyme, originating as an early piece of political satire from the 17th century aimed possibly at George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. However I use it to illustrate the way distorted beliefs can take hold and affect our lives. Some call them “memes”, therapists talk of core beliefs and life scripts. The point is that they take root and continue to influence us long after the original source has been forgotten. The fact that I dislike the rhyme so much suggests that it still has some power over me.
Finding and pulling out these mental weeds is one of the activities that goes on in therapy, but you can also do it for yourself by noticing and taking the trouble to understand the unexpected thoughts that pop into your head while doing everyday things.
What an interesting idea, to attach the disliked rhyme to your own core belief. (It also reminds me of the idea that, in those people that we dislike, we see things in them that we don't like about our own self.) This post made me dip into some of my childhood experiences - and you are right - it absolutely has influenced my scripts today, and more so than I want to admit.
ReplyDelete~January~
my lord...you dissected that rhyme into something i never would have thought of....amazing. xoxo
ReplyDeleteI too, am fascinated by how the stories, games, and songs of our childhoods look to us as adults.
ReplyDeleteEven as a kid, a found "Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater" disturbing. What does it mean that he "had a wife and couldn't keep her"? And why did he imprison her in that pumpkin shell? Let's teach the kids a rhyme about adultry and spousal abuse!
Speaking of abuse and dysfunctional relationships, did anyone else ever notice how horribly Miss Piggy treated Kermit the Frog? She had a borderline personality, for sure. I always felt sorry for poor Kermit.
You don't even want me to get started on "Peter Pan," a story so subtextually perverse and disgusting that it should not be read to children. Traditionaly, only people over the age of thirty were alowed to study the Kabala. It should be likewise with "Peter Pan."
This could be a topic that goes on and on! Hansel and Gretel, the Brothers Grimm...
ReplyDeleteHas this nursery rhyme crossed the pond?
What are little boys made of, made of? What are little boys made of?
Slugs and snails, and puppy-dogs' tails; And that's what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of, made of ? What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice, and all that's nice; And that's what little girls are made of.
I remember talking about it in group therapy once, saying how bad it had made me feel to be a boy. A woman replied that she'd always wanted to be a boy, because she hated being made of sugar and spice and would have much preferred to be made of slugs and snails!
Just to be clear, I'm not wanting to knock nursery rhymes, or have them sanitised as in the awful political correctness that banned "baa baa black sheep" on racist grounds. My point is about how as children we can so easily pick up wrong ideas that continue to affect us years later.
I always liked that particular rhyme, Sir. I wanted to be the sugar and spice (here we go....)and since boys were quite icky back then, slugs and snails and puppy dog tails was perfect for them! Well except for the puppy dog tails...
ReplyDeleteSomeone thought "Baa Baa Black Sheep" is racist? That's stupid. You do not have to go too far back in history to find a lot of truly racist folklore. When I was a kid, we often chose between two or more alternatives with "Eeny Meenie Minie Moe, Catch a tiger by the toe..."etc. My parents, who are in their sixties, told me that in their day you caught a "nigger" by the toe. Also, during certain games and races, children would shout "Last one there is a nigger baby!"
ReplyDeleteHere in America, little boys are made of "snips and snails and puppy dog tails." I always wondered what the "snips" refered to. "Slugs" makes more sense, but its a bit nasty. Snails at least have a nice shell. I also remember thinking that girls being made of "everything nice" represented wishfull thinking by adults, because girls can be very mean.
I always though the bit about making them cry meant they were crying because they liked him so much!
ReplyDeleteI'm a glass half full person I suppose! :P