Are these nursery rhymes safe to teach and learn?-- I mean, yeah, such petty things do pester me!

I’m a Punjabi and naturally, I loved listening to Honey Singh’s songs. Gradually the songs went from ‘dirty’ to ‘very dirty’ and I started becoming uncomfortable listening to them in social situations, leave alone dancing on them. But what is it that makes these songs dirty? It is the sexism and the objectification of women in these songs.

But where did Honey Singh, Badshah, etc. and others learn that women are objects which appeal to men and that they are subservient to men? And where did they learn from that it is normal to objectify women and that they can get away with the evil act. Well, one may be shocked to know that we have been learning that sexism is normal from the time we were NURSERY KIDS! But what did we learn in nursery? A bunch of rhymes only. But these not-so-cute rhymes are inherently sexist and racist. Take for example,

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife but couldn't keep her;(1)
He put her in a pumpkin shell (2)
And there he kept her very well.

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had another and didn't love her… (3)

In the rhyme, woman (1) is clearly depicted as an object who could be ‘kept’ (2) somewhere if she is ‘unmanageable’ (1) by the husband and can be replaced by another woman whom he hadn’t learnt to love yet (3).

Another example is,

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe (1)

She had so many children she did not know what to do

She gave them some broth without any bread (2)

She whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.[1]

In the text above, the single woman is shown as a poor lady when it says she lives in a shoe (1). She is unable to provide for the family (2) since the male member is absent.

A yet another example is the popular rhyme and my cousin’s favourite (she is 4 years old and knows when she is looking beautiful and when she is not) ‘Chubby cheeks’ which reads as

Chubby Cheeks, (1)
dimple chin, Rosy lips,
teeth within, Curly hair, very fair, (1)

 Eyes so blue, lovely too…

The rhyme reinforces the fact that ‘chubbiness’ and ‘very fair’ makes you desirable. And the popularity of this rhyme is across cultures! Does this mean that those class of people who are poor, can’t afford to have chubby babies, or African/black babies aren’t desirable?

Rhymes for the nursery were supposed to relax and teach language to the children but have rather been used to promote racism and to dictate that role of females in society is inferior to men.

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[1] https://www.nurseryrhymes.org/