This morning, Bella wants to know, “What’s that thing called so you can stand up and pee?” She mimes standing there with an imaginary something in her hands, spraying imaginary pee everywhere in a really cool way. Explaining, “See, make it go that way. Make it go over there. Make it go over here.”
I smile with a confident cheerfulness I do not feel, “A penis.”
She nods sagely, “A penis. Why don’t I got one?”
I look around for her Dad but of course at mind-cringing moments like these, he is nowhere to be found. “Because you’re a girl and only boys have a penis.”
She is not happy. “What do I got then?”
More bright cheer because Im just soooo happy to be having this unexpected anatomical conversation with a five year old this morning. “You have something really special called a vagina. And a vulva! And you’ve got a cli…ummm…yeah, and lots of other really great things.”
She’s still frowning. “But I can’t stand up and pee like this with a vagina.” And she does that imaginary peeing-like-a-dude action, turning from left to right, directing imaginary pee here and there. In a really cool way.
Clearly this child has seen some rotten ‘cool’ little boys peeing somewhere. In a really cool way.
“No, that’s right. You dont have a penis so you can’t pee standing up BUT you’ve got a wonderful vagina and that’s much nicer. Truly.”
She says, with truculence, “I want a penis.”
Just fabulous. “No you don’t. A vagina is way cool. It’s the bestest thing!” What a crappy feminist mother I must be. My five year old is spurning her femaleness already.
Bella spreads her arms out at me in wide-eyed grand supplication, and asks, “But Mama, what can a vagina DO?!”
Awwww hell… At this point I cant think of a damn thing – at least not anything as super cool as peeing standing up. Because yeah, from a five year old perspective, a vagina?
Is pretty useless.
I am indeed a pathetic excuse for a feminist mother.
Lani Wendt Young 
These are the moments you need a video camera recording so you can play the conversation (and miming) back at her 21st and make her hate life.
LMBO… OhMyGoodness… I totally love Bella. She’s gonna do great things.
Great post , got a laugh out of that !
Maybe you could get her a Go-Girl: http://www.go-girl.com/ – their tagline is ‘because life’s greatest adventure shouldn’t be finding a bathroom’ I’m actually serious!
OmGee I just clicked on that link – I had NO idea such things exsted! How cool is the GoGirl!? Aha, i learn something new and fantabulous everyday. Thanks Marianne
Ha! Yep, Bella saw something somewhere! I remember reading a story about some kind of pee competition, where some prepubescent boys were bragging about how far they could pee, and that girls were SO not in the competition…. Until a smart young lady challenged them….and won! How, you ask? NO HANDS ALLOWED!!! Of course, nice young ladies don’t have pissing contests with boys….forget I said anything! Bella has something no boy can do….birth a baby! Wait….that’s also YEARS away… Ummm…I see what you mean…. Ummmmm…. Good thing I had a boy…even though as a single mom, I had to teach him how to pee standing up. How? With the same imaginary finger trick Bella used in her hysterical demo! It has its uses!!! Okay… That’s not helping! I’ll stop now…. I’m laughing so hard, I gotta GO!!!
OMG, OMG, OMG…I remember this time in my life. As I told you in the comment I made on the nakedness, my family is pretty open. They might as well be nudists when people arent around. For that reason, I’ve seen both my parents and other family members naked enough times not to even bat an eye when I see a random naked person (unless that naked person is channing tatum, or vin diesel, or the rock, or jason momoa, or tyrese, or taylor lautner…yumm) and I and my sister have seen my fathers “penits” (her pronounciation at the time, not mine) too many times to count. I knew all about it and I was jealous. I wanted to pee standing up too and came up with a brilliant (not) idea to use an empty toilet paper roll and go for it. My older cousin, four years older than me, thought it was an ingenious invention and sat on the sink in the bathroom as I made my preparations. Using the empty toilet paper roll just as you would imagine, I stood in front of the toilet and peed…………………
lets just say, I never did that again. First of all, I didnt hold it correctly or over the right areas so pee dribbled down the sides of the roll onto my fingers and down my leg. Once I got it held correctly, it did nothing but further wet the roll and my fingers holding the roll. And you know what eventually came out the correct end of the roll????…..like TWO WHOLE DROPS of pee. all that work and for nothing but an impending bath to clean my ignorant self up. My cousin and I were heartbroken, and the roll was disposed of in a plastic bag and thrown in the outside trash so my parents wouldnt find the evidence.
My dad asked me later that heening how my experiment went…………apparently he was listening at the door, and he died laughing at our stupidity…
It certainly wasnt my smartest or proudest moment of my life, and I eventually wanted a penis even more, but it did teach me all about toulet paper rolls and their water soulability, and all about feamale autonomy down there…..and that when dad says you cant pee standing up, he already knows you’ll probably try, and he’ll let you do it and laugh at you afterward 😦
yea so ignore those typos…… instead of heening, I meant evening….toilet instead or toulet…and solubility instead of soluability
This made my day! I had a very similar conversation with my daughter as I was potty training my son, and yes, the perks of the vagina do not seem valid to a 5 year old. (Especially when said 5 year old already knows that the vagina bleeds every month.) Thanks for sharing!
Im dreading the day my girls ask me about this too as I have caught them looking and laughing at their little 4 year old brother’s one…too funny!
She can pee standing up – I have friends that can. Google it, and teach her how. Basically, you spread apart your libia minor. Make sure to use a lot of pressure in the beginning. Practice in the shower. Also, there is always p style. Most people think its weird for a girl to pee standing up. But, you are a feminist, so you are probably open to the idea.