THE PLACES I most liked to play as a little girl were scenes of enclosure and domestic adventurism: the playroom furnished with dolls and a tiny mock kitchen, the living room where my friend and I staged balls, the pavements where we played skip-rope and hopscotch, the shaded streets where we rode our bikes.

Here at Tradition in Action is a fascinating piece on modernist playground equipment and its hostility to girlish play. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira writes:

The feminine soul is a fountainhead of grace, delicacy and sensibility, which enriches the moral and social life of humanity with spiritual values that man does not give it. The equilibrium of the mankind demands women with a rich mental structure displaying all the gifts proper to their sex, just as it demands men with profoundly virile souls. It would be absurd to educate a generation of boys in the most effeminate way possible. No less absurd would it be to educate a generation of girls with the intention of making them as masculine as possible. 

Please follow and like us: