In a perfect world, boys wouldn't be afraid to wear dresses.

This was one example of gender defiance at last night's Make Your Own Gender-Defying Coloring Book Workshop: Exploring Gender, with author Jacinta Bushnell.

The ASUW Women's Action Commission (WAC) sponsored the workshop, which aimed to recreate images typically found in children's media.

"It's really about taking images we already have in our culture and writing a new script for them," said WAC director Sasha Tyshler. "In fairy tales, you never really see a twist in the story."

Bushnell, who created the event, had noticed that at a young age, children are unaware of gender norms.

"Children are gender queer," Bushnell said. "They don't know what gender should do what."

However, once children reach a certain age, they start getting ridiculed and harassed for not conforming to how society believes a male or female should act.

Around 2001, Bushnell decided to do something about the issue and created her first Gender-Defying Coloring Book.

She took others' artwork and used Photoshop to write her own text.

The workshop gave participants the chance to do the same; they changed classic images of the characters they grew up with. Pictures of the Little Mermaid, Cinderella, the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and Snow White were strewn about a table waiting for their gender to be defied.

Participants cut, pasted and combined different images together, and then wrote captions for their newly created depictions.

Captions described strong female characters playing a variety of sports and male characters that weren't afraid to wear a dress — and Cinderella was finally able to fix her own carriage.

"It's not about what women should do and what men should do," Tyshler said. "It's about saying that anyone can do anything they want."

While the event was fun and lighthearted, it did have a serious undertone.

One of the main goals of WAC is to raise awareness of gender issues on campus.

ASUW allocates a given budget to WAC, and with the money the organization puts on events that strive to bring light to these issues.

Events include this one, as well as The Vagina Monologues, co-produced by WAC last month.

"With any event I try to put on, I try to attack all oppression," Tyshler said. "Oppression is something we all have to face."

According to the students at the Make Your Own Gender-Defying Coloring Book Workshop, it was successful in attacking oppression and raising gender issue awareness.

"I think it's really important coloring books like this happen," senior Robin Haguewood said. "It gives our future children an alternate viewpoint and tells them that they don't have to subscribe to gender norms."

Reach contributing writer Shauna Nuckles at develop@thedaily.washington.edu.