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the repository of all good things. "What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice!" Little boys, you will remember are composed of snips and snails and puppy dog's tails. I wonder whether any adult has ever reflected on the feelings of a little boy when he first hears this nursery tale! It is told in story or said in fun, but is it taken that way--is he in a position to understand? Or does it hurt and change him a bit to realize that he can't be "everything nice"? Very few men remain sensitive to this in adult life, but it wasn't said to the adult but to the child in his form- ative years and I am personally very sure that this nur- sery rhyme and many other things that happen to little boys do make a deep impression and influence in some ways (in some case-not all) their adult behaviour.
All of our love songs and poems idealize and idolize the female. Listen in your mind a moment to all the pop- ular songs you can remember: Who is so desirable that the singer would swim the deepest ocean and climb the highest mountain--whose eyes are like stars and teeth like pearls? On the other hand, who is about to die if he can't have her, and whose life is ruined since she went away? In short, we attribute to the femaile in song and story all of those virtues and qualities that we all feel to represent the best in the human race. Jesus taught these things (he didn't have much to say about strength, courage, aggressiveness, competition, domination etc. did he? Probably because there was too much of them around anyway and then as now they were responsible for most of the ills of the world.). But the press of everyday life makes it impossible for most men to even approach the type of life he prescribed. But we do like to think that these good things are part and parcel of the women in our lives. The word "mother" always conjures up a vision of a wonderful, self-sacrificing little woman, sweet, lovely, beautiful--all good and no evil. Yet the world is full of mothers who don't come within miles of this picture. The point is that it is not what the female IS but what she REPRESENTS to the male that is important (I am talk-