Boys in Pink

I recently heard snippets of a discussion about little boys wearing pink. Funnily enough,  no one really ever seems to care if little girls wear blue. It's just not okay for boys to demean themselves by dressing girly, it would seem. It says a lot about the underlying, largely unacknowledged viewpoint of our society when "like a girl" is just about the worst thing you can say to a boy. Forget what that tells our sons; what must that tell our daughters who absorb that attitude about what it means to be a girl?

That aside, what astounds me is how very, very arbitrary it is. There is nothing inherently feminine about pink, and nothing inherently masculine about blue. Until the 1920s, pink was quite an acceptable color choice for a boy. It was considered a variant of red, that a vibrant, powerful, masculine color. Blue, associated with peacefulness and the Mother Mary, was the feminine color. The switch for us came about after some clever marketing in NYC around Christmastime a little less than 100 years ago. A department store wanted to have a really standout window display for the holidays, so they switched the colors and made pink for girls, and blue for boys. It caught on and ever since it's been accepted as a fact that pink is a girly color, and it is almost incomprehensible to the average person that it could have ever been any other way.

I know of a few parents who choose to avoid gendered clothing altogether. I do have gendered clothing for my children, and would not intentionally encourage them to dress as the opposite sex; it may be merely a social construct, but this is the society that we live in, and the social group of which we are a part. It's not a priority for me to openly flout all conventions. However, I would like to think I would not discourage my sons from wearing "girls' clothing." I would love to say that I would enjoy it wholeheartedly, but I admit I have concerns.

I remember when my son was 2 or 3. He got one of his older sisters' pink sequined tutus, and put it around his neck. He chased them all around, roaring and posturing, obviously feeling that this article of clothing gave him special powers of strength and invincibility. Perhaps it's easier for us (as a society) to accept when a small boy obviously just doesn't understand; and his reaction to the clothing was completely in line with what our culture believes is boyishness, all signs pointing toward his continued development of a manly adulthood. For most people, those facts make it a cute story, and not anything "weird" or "off." But what if he had pranced and twirled in it? If the power that it gave him was the power to float delicately and gently sing flowers into being? "There's something not right with that boy," would be a very usual response, whether spoken or left unsaid. To be effeminate seems to be the worst sin, the worst defect, for a boy.

There is such an enormous stigma attached to boys that have or embrace feminine trappings or traits. Even people who are open minded and liberal in other ways may find themselves cringing inside at the idea of a girly boy, or a feminine man. Some mothers, who would prefer to be permissive with what their children wear, fear such a visceral reaction from people around them that would introduce unwarranted ugliness into their sons' lives if they were allowed to wear a shirt with a unicorn on it in public.They know that if a boy wears pink or otherwise girly clothing, he may become a target for harassment and insults, and, depending on the situation and his age, possibly even violence.

I know that if one of my sons wanted to wear something that was clearly for girls in our culture, I would be torn. On the one hand is the reality that it doesn't matter what color they wear and the fact that it's my job to support and facilitate their burgeoning sense of self in whatever ways that manifests... and on the other is the understanding that they might be setting themselves up for mockery and hurt by strangers, family, or peers who have been conditioned to find boys who cross the line into "feminine" to be repugnant, subversive, and perhaps even subhuman. 

I want to empower my children to approach the world with a sense of belonging and trust, expecting the best from people, and giving their best as well. I would like to get to a point in my own journey where I truly trust that good flows freely. I don't want my children to ever feel they have to hide who they are, that they need to be afraid of censure and adjust their own lives to fit unjust or illogical expectations. I also want them to equipped to deal with the negativity of others; I want them to be able to weigh all the information and make choices based on individual situations. Perhaps part of that is having those conversations about what our culture expects from males and females, what gender means, why being "like a girl" is something a boy is expected to avoid, and why wearing the pink ruffled shirt is something that he may wish to avoid in certain contexts. Or not.

It's difficult to balance my own ideas of equality, self-expression, and embracing what my children bring to my life and what they want in their own lives, with fears that they may be rejected or misunderstood, dismissed or hurt, because they wore the wrong color. That oversimplifies an enormous and complex issue a great deal, but when I hear heated debates about whether a 2 year old boy should be allowed to wear an article of pink clothing, that is how it seems to me. It's obvious to me that they should be allowed to wear pink if they want to; it's also obvious that they will almost certainly run into many people in their lives who could not disagree more.

My children are awesome; they are fabulous magical little people, regardless of their personal aesthetic. As a mother it would break my heart to have how wonderful they are overshadowed by ignorant assumptions about "boys who wear clothes like that" or "girls who dress that way." I imagine if my son wanted to wear clothing that I feared would cause people to disregard or actively dislike him, it would be difficult for me to accept that. I might want to steer him to more neutral clothing that would protect him from some of that. And in doing so, I might be just another voice saying, "You are only worthy if you fit this mold."