{"id":132325,"date":"2015-10-10T22:39:46","date_gmt":"2015-10-10T22:39:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/10\/10\/my-5-year-old-insists-that-bilbo-baggins-is-a\/"},"modified":"2015-10-10T22:39:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-10T22:39:46","slug":"my-5-year-old-insists-that-bilbo-baggins-is-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/10\/10\/my-5-year-old-insists-that-bilbo-baggins-is-a\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>My 5-year-old insists that Bilbo Baggins is a girl.<\/p>\n<p>The first time she made this claim, I protested. Part of the fun of reading to your kids, after all, is in sharing the stories you loved as a child. And in the story I knew, Bilbo was a boy. A boy hobbit. (Whatever that entails.) <\/p>\n<p>But my daughter was determined. She liked the story pretty well so far, but Bilbo was definitely a girl. So would I please start reading the book the right way? I hesitated. I imagined Tolkien spinning in his grave. I imagined mean letters from his testy estate. I imagined the story getting as lost in gender distinctions as dwarves in the Mirkwood. <\/p>\n<p>Then I thought: What the hell, it\u2019s just a pronoun. My daughter wants Bilbo to be a girl, so a girl she will be. And you know what? The switch was easy. Bilbo, it turns out, makes a terrific heroine. She\u2019s tough, resourceful, humble, funny, and uses her wits to make off with a spectacular piece of jewelry. Perhaps most importantly, she never makes an issue of her gender\u2014and neither does anyone else.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div class='attribution'>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/double_x\/doublex\/2013\/12\/bilbo_baggins_is_a_girl_until_children_s_books_catch_up_to_our_daughters.html\" target=\"_blank\">Bilbo Baggins is a girl: Until children\u2019s books catch up to our daughters, rewrite them.<\/a> (via <a href=\"http:\/\/daxsymbiont.tumblr.com\/\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">daxsymbiont<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll reblog this for forever<\/p>\n<p>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/memymarie.tumblr.com\/\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">memymarie<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My 5-year-old insists that Bilbo Baggins is a girl. The first time she made this claim, I protested. Part of the fun of reading to your kids, after all, is in sharing the stories you loved as a child. And in the story I knew, Bilbo was a boy. A boy hobbit. (Whatever that entails.) &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/10\/10\/my-5-year-old-insists-that-bilbo-baggins-is-a\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[22,1113,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}