“It’s all my son talks about,” said one.
“My son too,” said the other. “Apparently it’s gotten so bad the teachers are going to ban them from playing Girl Trap.”
Girl Trap? It sounded like a bad Elvis flick. The game, I learned, goes like this: a group of boys perch on the monkey bars like hungry raptors, peer down and select a target, preferring ultrafeminine girls with flowing locks and dresses. Once a girl is in their sights, they take aim with imaginary lasers and “freeze” her. The 4- and 5-year-old boys discuss tying her up, bashing her head, burying her in a pit, making her motionless and powerless.
I lose my breath. This is child’s play, right? The boys’ talk is the only assault here. They don’t act on their words. In most cases, the girl is oblivious to the boys’ plans for her.
So? Maybe I am oversensitive because I am working on a project about men who batter women, but hearing this game described, I feel a little weak. I kiss my daughter goodbye and hang on for an extra squeeze until she struggles away.
I leave her for the library, where I cozy up to a computer terminal to research materials on domestic abuse. As a volunteer at a battered women’s shelter, I have crouched on the floor with a quivering woman who is convinced her husband might spot her through a window. As a reporter, I’ve interviewed a man who bashed his wife’s head against a wall, another who hit every woman he loved, starting at the age of 18. I know that 30 percent of all women will be psychologically or physically abused by an intimate. I do the math and deduce that two little girls in my daughter’s class could grow up to find themselves in a real-life Girl Trap.
My daughter has said that when she is 20, she “will walk around the world” by herself. But will a game like this shake her self-esteem? At 3, will she feel dominated by this gender play? This preschool game forces me to confront something I have tried not to think about: I am not the only influence in my daughter’s life. Already, I cannot protect her from hurt.
I draw on memory for comfort. First-grade lunch hour. Every day the same blond boy used to chase me around the blacktop without mercy. I dreaded this noontime tradition (maybe because he was short and frog-eyed), but I gathered from the indifference of nearby grown-ups that somehow the chase was expected and should be accepted. My mother told me this boy chased me because he liked me, logic I never understood. I knew only that my job was to tire him out, so he’d give up–until the next lunch hour.
Girl Trap has innocent, even humorous elements. The boys talk of filling a pit with peanut butter so that any girl who happens by will become stuck in the goo. It is their chilling talk of fetching a rope to tie the girls “so they can be ours” that makes me want to keep my daughter home from school. Then there is the 4-year-old boy overheard saying he wished he had brought a real knife so he could cut up the redheaded girl’s face. Not exactly the pigtail-yanking repartee I remember from my playground years.
The teacher agrees that the violent imagery of the game is offensive and disturbing. She blames the boys’ exposure to inappropriate media, our increasingly violent culture–the usual culprits. At school, she decides to distract the boys from the game but has no luck. She outlaws it. She says Girl Trap is the first thing she has banned at her school in two decades of teaching.
With my daughter safely home again, I plan a delicate talk about Girl Trap. I speak in vague terms. I remind her to use her head, stand up for herself and stay away from kids who play violent games. My careful words waft toward my daughter, and her blue eyes look back with clarity and trust. She has no idea what I am talking about.
As it turns out, the game usually targeted older girls and my daughter was not included. But I imagine a version of Girl Trap is played at schools across the country every day. I suppose less vigilant teachers allow boys to be boys, label the game child’s play and accept disturbing talk as normal playground banter.
The truth is, even at our preschool, Girl Trap lives. Months after the ban, I take my daughter to a classmate’s house to play. In his cheerful, red and white room, the 5-year-old boy is excited to show me a new superhero Transformer toy. We chat a bit and then out of nowhere he says, “At my school, my friend and I, we play Girl Trap.”
My blood turns cold. “We don’t like that game,” I say firmly. “But we play Girl Trap,” he insists, as if he hasn’t heard me. “We cut off their feet. We haven’t been back to his house to play.
