I was doing my regular search on YouTube for vintage Sesame Street clips when I came across this gem - sadly, only in Dutch, but I'm putting the lyrics here so you can see both. (Or call me, and I'll sing it to you.)

Anyway, I was singing this to the kids when Paul and I realized that, thank God, we don't HAVE to teach them that women can be any kind of job in the world. Because they don't even think about it - Sophie has wanted to be an astronaut, and now an artist, for ages. They know women who are doctors, and all sorts of other jobs. The message planted in our little pink heads in the 70s worked; I grew up believing no goal was beyond my grasp as a female and that I could do it, and have a family, too. Is it hard work? Heck, yesh. But the point is that one generation later, nobody even questions that women have a place in the workplace other than as a nurse, or teacher. Now if we could just get equal pay....

Anyway, watch and enjoy. And sing along!



Women can fly way up high on trapezes
Women can be rollerskaters
Women can help to find cures for diseases
Women can hunt alligators

Pilots and poets, policewomen too
Look at the things that we women can do

We can be clowns
We can be cooks
We can be bus drivers
We can write books

Just look around you, it's easy to see
There's nothing we women can't be

Sing it like it is, Teresa.

I used to be good with a needle and thread
I'd sew dainty dresses of blue
Then I got an urgin' to be a great surgeon
And now I sew people up, too!

Then she got an urgin' to be a great surgeon
And now she sews people up, too!

Margaret, tell 'em about the cat.

Once I had a cat that I'd try to teach tricks
A quiet and sweet little thing
But the tricks I was tryin' required a lion ...

(A lion ...! )

... and that's why I'm here in this ring!

The tricks she was tryin' required a lion
And that's why she's here in this ring!

Ohhhhh ...
I used to go bicycling far from my home
My mother would say "come back soon" (come back soon)
I travelled so fast off the earth in a blast-off ...
... now I'm on my way to the moon!

She travelled so fast off the earth in a blast-off ...
5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

Now she's on her way to the moon!
(To the moon ...!)
Women can ride up inside of a rocket
Women can be office clerkers
Women can sew things like pillows and pockets
Women can be soda jerkers

Pilots and poets, policewomen too
Look at the things that we women can do ...

We can be clowns
We can be cooks
We can be bus drivers
We can write books
We can catch fish
We can train dogs
We can climb mountains
And we can chop logs!

Just look around you, it's easy to see ...
There's nothing we women can't be!