Father's Day and Gender Stereotypes

Yesterday I was in Target looking for a card for my dad and I had an epiphane about the very sexist nature of this holiday, or at least the greeting cards it was created to sell. I have no problem with setting aside a day to celebrate Fathers (or Mothers or any other group worth celebrating), but think about the Mother's Day cards versus the Father's Day cards. On Mother's day it's all about "you do it all mom": bake cookies, work full time, clean the house, set the example, raise the kids, drive the mini van,etc. etc. There's no disputing that image of motherhood. Believe me, my mom could be the poster mother for the do-it-all type. But then there are the Father's Day cards. They assume that Dad's don't do-it-all. In fact they do a few very specific things: mow the lawn, grill, play golf or baseball, watch tv, drink beer, and fart. My dad always hated mowing the lawn, I have no memory of him ever grilling anything, he doesn't play golf or baseball or any other sport, and while he does watch his share of tv he doesn't do so incessantly with a beer in one hand and a remote in the other while emitting unnatural odors. In addition, all the cards in the "from daughter" category either assume the daughter is Daddy's little princess or some adult version of that sentiment. I do not now nor have I ever been a little princess, so those would only work if I was going for irony. Therefore I ended up choosing a nice but somewhat generic card. Hallmark doesn't have a little poem and stock photo for dad's who teach their daughters about profit margins, world history, current politics and economics, literature, Broadway showtunes, useless Hollywood trivia, rhetoric, or Shakespeare. I mean no offense to those of you whose dad's do fit the greeting card stereotype or still do think of yourself as Daddy's Little Princess. But I'm happy to be the bibliophilic feminist intellectual my dad contributed to me becoming.