My nephew, who is adorable (all my nephews are adorable), had a recent photo session. In princess costumes. The whole ball of wax. Several costume changes. Satin, sequins, feathers, tiaras. And let me state for the record, he looked just darling. And not at all upset about the momentary fudging of his gender identity.
My sister-in-law is pregnant with her third boy, and coping with the fact that this means there will be no girls. She hasn’t had any easy pregnancies, and had decided ahead of time that if this wasn’t a girl, it wasn’t meant to be. She’s a terrific boys’ mom. Steady, tolerant, no-nonsense. But she definitely had wanted that daughter experience.
So, while her second is small enough (a year and a half) to not have any real ideas about what girls do or boys do, she took advantage of a trip to visit the boys’ little friend who has a princess dress-up box, and got him dolled up. And took pictures. Which the whole family has seen. My mother, of course, thinks he looks precious. My father did a very good job of not freaking out about his grandson in toddler drag. My sister and I giggled, but with reservations.
Not that I think this is going to be some precursor to a lifestyle choice. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But, the kid is all boy. I’m guessing they’ll have enough trouble in the future getting him into clean clothes, let alone worrying about him favoring chiffon trapeze dresses and kitten heels. What both my sister and I know, painfully, is that our family has a long, long memory for childhood indiscretions. And he will be catching a ration of crap regularly, at every family reunion, for having once been the belle of the ball. Especially given that there is photographic evidence.
But honestly, why? I’ve never been all that tense about gender identity. In my humble opinion, there would be far fewer guys messed up about their manly-manitude if they were allowed to play around without prejudice as kids. At the very least, I’m sure that dress up time was no harm, no foul. The kid is grinning from ear to ear and playing to the camera. And he’s destined to be the middle child. Something my brother should understand all too well. Let him have his moment in the sun where he’s showered with attention and all eyes are on him, and he’s got his mama all to himself.
And he really did look adorable.
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4 comments:
My cousins and I dressed up my brother and their brother in drag and I'm sad that we have no photographic evidence. They looked gorgeous and totally hammed it up. We tease them mercilessly now, but it was fun!
Another time, my aunt and I convinced my brother to let us "party perm" his hair, which washed out after shampooing. I had really short hair at the time, but my brother had a little length to it. He had the most adorable ringlets when we were done, but since it was truly temporary he freaked and washed it all out before we could snap a pic.
Your brother was wise beyond his years. My s-i-l state quite mater-of-factly about the pictures that a mom always has to have blackmail material.
kids today have it rough - there really is no occasion without several cell phone cameras, flip cameras, etc. thank goodness FB bans kids under 13 from having pages - for now...
That is very true. I thought that the fact that there was a picture of me reading a picture book on the toilet at 3 was bad enough when you had to be physically in the room with the actual picture. One click with a cellphone that's linked to Facebook and the whole world can see you in a junior "private moment".
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