This Walmart shopper said something really creepy about a baby, and it just goes to show how deeply misogyny is ingrained.
Womanhood in modern society is impossible. It’s like an unwinnable game of Goldilocks— nothing is ever just right, you’re always too much or too little. Even if you’re two years old.
Too assertive? You’re a witch. Too passive? You’re a pushover.
Too confident? You’re full of yourself. Too humble? You’re insecure.
Too emotional? You’re hysterical. Too stoic? You’re cold and unfeeling.
The examples go on and on. It’s permeated so much that a grown man feels comfortable saying something misogynistic about a literal two-year-old child.
Walmart shopper creeps on baby
In a viral post with more than 9 million views, mom Julia Brainard (@julia_brainard) shares the alarming experience she had while shopping with her two-year-old daughter.
Brainard was running an errand at Walmart and had her daughter in the child seat.
While she was standing in line to checkout, an older man who was standing behind them started talking to Brianard and told her that the little girl was “being a flirt.”
“As she was actively avoiding eye contact while he was trying to talk to her,” Brainard says.
“And something about that just didn’t sit right with me.”
What was wrong about the interaction?
You may be in a situation where you clearly feel uncomfortable or where someone is doing something wrong, but you can’t quite articulate it.
In this case, we think Brainard felt put off by something known as “adultification.”
Adultification is when adult behaviors and intentions are put onto children—especially young girls, Black girls, and Black boys—before they’re developmentally ready.
Doing so strips them of their innocence and ability to move through the world as the children that they are since they now have societal expectations placed on them.
In this case, it’s not just weird and inappropriate to claim a baby (again, a literal baby) is flirting with a grown man. It also reflects the larger issue of adultification tied to sexualization. A child’s neutral behavior is turned sexual and reinforces the idea that even the youngest girl’s behavior is dictated by how the male gaze perceives it.
You’ve probably seen this behavior reflected in other common ways adults talk about children.
They say a child will “break hearts one day” or enforce dress codes that target girls so that they don’t “distract their male counterparts.”
Our culture teaches girls, all along the way, that they will be watched and judged, and their actions dictated by how men perceive them instead of how they perceive themselves.
‘What a weird thing to say.’
“I would have said very loudly, what a weird thing to say,” a top comment read.
“I was at the register in Walmart with the cashier my daughter loves cuz he gives her stickers and the guy behind me said my daughter has bedroom eyes and the cashier pretty well lost it on him,” a person shared.
“My son was DAYS OLD DAYS! An ‘aunt’ said ‘oh he’s gonna have a big one’ while I changed my son’s diaper. Haven’t seen her in 6 years,” another added.
“I had a bus driver when I was 5 who told me that he wanted me to ride more than his bus. I told my mom because he smiled at me funny. I never saw that man again. Thank you for protecting your baby,” a commenter wrote.
The Daily Dot reached out to Brainard for comment via email and Instagram direct message.
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