When The Kid Was A Kid By Anahita Ghazvinizadeh

When the Kid was a Kid Name Institution When the Kid Was a Kid Anahita Ghazvinizadeh’s, “When the Kid was a Kid” borrows from the simple or rather common act of role-playing in most of the children’s games around the world as she provokes the world to perceive the issue of gender identity from children’s or a child’s perspective. It is a rather unorthodox approach to take in trying to address one of the most contentious issues in the society today but effective to those who are open-minded or willing to expand their sociological imagination. Growing up, children often pay little attention to their gender identities and seem unaffected by how they behave or what is expected of them from the society into which they are born and brought up. In their innocent role-playing games, they embrace different genders by dressing or acting in ways parallel to their physical sexual orientations and an adult watching them play would pass it at how sweet the children are or simply how funny they can be. It is acceptable to shift gender roles at this age even to the adults, but that is not the case when the kids reach teenagehood and beyond as societal restrictions take the reins and conformity to stipulated gender roles is expected and in some cases demanded. Anahita Ghazvinizadeh’s is a call for a review of our perceptions and ideologies to imitate those of children in engaging, interacting, or incorporating the different gender identities into the wider world community. Gender identity is one of the most contentious and sensitive issues in the current world as it cuts across the social, political, and economic realms of the global community. Gender identity is at the center of the acceptance, accommodation or tolerance of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community into the global society as normal human beings deserving of the rights accorded to the heterosexuals (Fadescha, 2014). Religious and cultural designs play a significant role in determining people’s view and perception of the individuals with different sexual orientations contradicting their gender or physical constructs through which they are identified as being male or female. The beliefs propagated for or against the sexual orientation of an individual can easily be incorporated into the society’s way of doing things and beliefs through traditional guidelines or religious teachings against or for embracing the people with a different gender orientation from their physical being or indications. It is an issue plays along well in the most political dialects and often polarizes the electorate of any democratic country while also causing dissent in the authoritarian regimes (Fadescha, 2014). Economically, gender identity is at the center of the equality debate as women are taking up roles perceivably designed for the masculine gender in various economic activities and demanding equal recognition, respect, and reward or compensation for their efforts. When a child is born it would only take to its immediate environment and simulate the behavioral activities and conduct of the surrounding community. The nuclear family forms the backbone of a child’s conduct growing up, behavioral adaptations and their subsequent integration into the broader community and eventually into the world. The movie’s, “When the Kid was a Kid” storyline build’s around the same analogy as it is about kids imitating their parent’s roles in their unit families and interacting amongst themselves within the distinct or rather unique roles that they assume. It is a short movie about a group of kids playing their parents in the gender role-playing film. The lead or main character, Taha, comes from a single parent household as a result of his parents’ divorce and thus emulating a lot of what his mother does in her daily activities (Ghazvinizadeh, 2011). The fact that he is a boy that plays the gender role of his mother creates a lot of tension before the actual filming of the movie as the rest of the kids enact one of their parents with whom they share the same gender. Despite him being a boy, the children do not show any indifference to Taha’s playing of the feminine role and go on staging the most interesting and innocent imitation of their parental roles (Ghazvinizadeh, 2011). The movie idea stems from Anahita’s own upbringing in a liberal family in the highly religious regime in Tehran with little tolerance to any form of gender rebellion or apparent affiliation to unacceptable sexual orientations and, or behaviors. Nevertheless, her parent’s soft rebellion to the status quo and mocking of the gender roles associated by the society to fatherhood or motherhood encouraged her to make a film challenging the common perception of gender identity through assumptions of roles stipulated and speculated by the community (Fadescha, 2014). The short film puts to test a person’s individuality and gender identity through symbolic acts of body enhancement, cross-dressing and occupancy of ge...