people believe what they want to believe

just because sparrow has short hair people assume she's a boy. even if she has a pink dress on she gets "hey buddy!" or i get, "how old is he?" frequently i try carrying on the conversation without revealing her actual gender because i am either tired of correcting people or i want to spare them the embarrassment. so i tiptoe around my wording, which gets rather interesting and challenging, and the longer the naive questioner wants to talk, the more creative i have to be once i have decided to try to avoid the confrontation. otherwise it just becomes more embarrassing for both of us when i finally reveal, either in a flustered confession, or an accidental pronoun slip, that it is, in fact, a girl. now i have started putting barrettes in her hair to make it even more obvious so i don't get myself into these awkward situations. but it's no use. this, from men on two separate occasions(!): "what's in his hair?"