For a week the Lawyer refused to practice for his school's end-of-the-year dance performance until his teacher agreed to let him play a bee, not a flower. He stood his ground for five school days, refusing to take part with the other flowers until he got his way. Unbelievable. And this is only kindergarten. What stunts will he pull in junior high and high school?

The Lawyer's realization that perhaps being a dancing flower isn't the most macho role for a boy to play surprised me. He's only six. I suppose this is the age when gender really starts to count for something.

"Boys, they don't make good flowers," he informed me, crossing his arms for added authority. "Flowers are too girly. Bees, now that's what boys are good at being. Bees sting. They're brave."

I see. Somehow it's tougher and more boyish to play a buzzing drone who caters to the queen bee, allowing her demand him around at her beck and call, right?

"'You really want to be a flower?" I asked him on the way home from an urgent flower vs. bee meeting with his concerned teachers. "Go ahead and be a flower. Who cares what the other boys think!" Next I thoroughly bored him with my sheep vs. shepherd speech. I think he stopped listening at my first bleet.

"At first I thought I wanted to be a flower but then my guy friends laughed at me," The Lawyer said. "They said it's cooler to be a bee."

Who cares? Well, he does, that's who. And he's the one who has to perform in front of all the other kids in his school, from his fellow kindergartners all the way up to the eighth graders. Not to mention all the factulty, parents, siblings and extended family. Truth is, I would've cared at that age too. Hell, I still care too much what everyone thinks. Maybe that's where he gets it from.

All this talk about "coolness" and flora versus fauna has me pondering peer pressure, gender stereotypes and our first introductions to both.

What if we told boys it's okay to cry and girls it's okay not to be pretty? What if we told our children that other peoples' opinions of them mean nothing in the end?

I wish I had time to delve deeper into these cans of worms. This post isn't even a surface scratch but you get the idea.

Would you let your son be a dancing flower if he wanted to be one?

When and how did you first realized that boys are "supposed" to act and look a certain way, and girls another? What was your first encounter with peer pressure? How did you react?