Would you let your son wear a Cinderella dress?
And what would your husband say?
written by KIM NOVICK
YOUR CHILD - September, October 2007 ©
.jpg "Image") SINCE MY SON was born four years ago I've been a little wary of forcing "manhood onto him. I don't tell him to "be a man" if he cries, I don't care if he likes the colour pink and I don't care if he wants to experiment with my nail polish. Hell, when else is he going to get the freedom to do all these things with impunity? So, when he recently asked me for a Cinderella dress (blue, his best colour) I didn't care much.
What did throw me was the reaction of some of my supposedly liberal friends. They looked a little stunned. Then it began ...
"Oooh I don't know what my husband would say if he came home and Jack was wearing a girl's dress-up outfit."
"Well, Alan would have a fit."
"I just wouldn't buy it for him. Why didn't you just say no?"
WHY DIDN'T I say no? My son is a beautiful, imaginative creature, who hasn't yet figured out that he is required to differentiate between girl stuff and boy stuff. He simply loves to dress up, be it in a Cinderella ball gown, fairy wings
and a veil or, his latest acquisition, a Peter Pan outfit. He roars around the house done up in whatever his imagination dictates, acting out the roles of his latest hero - or heroine.
I'm delighted, thinking what a wonder it is that with a prop or two he can create an entire scenario and spend hours wandering around a different world. He swims up and down the passage like Ariel, flies through the kitchen brandishing swords at Captain Hook and dances across the garden in glass slippers. I have to ask: why is this bad? When did we start worrying about whether our children were imagining gender-appropriate scenarios?
The women may hide behind their husbands' frail masculine egos, but I don't think they should get off so easily. My faith in my husband would be sorely tested if I suspected he had an issue with our son living out a fantasy. But my own brother - a serious braaivleis, rugby, South African oke - flips at the sight of his nephew donning a mermaid tale.
Am I being defensive? Absolutely. I really thought we had moved beyond such trivialities. We boast about our racially/sexually/religiously varied friends - even wear their presence like an "I'm a liberally minded millennium being" badge. Yet when it comes down to it, the mere act of a young child dressing up according to whim (as opposed to gender) blows all our convictions right out of the water. Shame on us. Here begins the brainwashing of yet another generation and those old prejudices just keep hanging on.
Not in this household. No doubt, Seth will, over time, learn that boys and girls are different; already it appears that children sort these things out for themselves. In the meantime, he will go on living in his world of childhood delight and I will go on nurturing that beautiful, open mind of his. For me, and for him, imagination has no gender requirement.
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