You may have noticed last week's cultural kerfuffle -- brouhaha? -- over an emailed feature that showed J. Crew president and creative director Jenna Lyons laughing with her son Beckett, whose toenails are pink -- his favorite color.
It shared the news cycle with deadly radiation in Japan, the historic budget battle, civil war in Libya and a number of other equally weighty issues.
Full disclosure. I know Jenna. I know Beckett. And my husband runs the company.
Just for the sake of discussion, let's restage the photo shoot. Suppose instead of a mother, it was a father. And instead of a son, it was a daughter. And instead of toenail polish, the father was applying eye-black to reduce glare on the cheek bones of a little girl, with a backwards baseball cap, who was getting ready for a game.
Would the world be having this conversation?
Would Fox News (which seems to pounce on these kinds of things the way Al Jazeera covers American actions in the Middle East) have aired a charge by Erin Brown from the Media Research Center (whose mission is to "prove -- through sound scientific research -- that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines American values ...") that J. Crew is "exploiting Beckett behind the façade of liberal transgendered identity politics?"
Would FoxNews.com columnist Dr. Keith Ablow have cited it as a "dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity?"
Would the issue have been earnestly discussed from ABC to CNN?
The answer is no -- on all counts. Fathers with little girls who compete and even dress like little boys is celebrated. Mothers doing anything that carries even a hint of crossing a line of gender correctness is viewed as another insidious step in the emasculation of American youth.
It is moms, it seems, who hold the power over a son's sexual orientation. One misstep, and there he goes -- over to the wild side.
There must be something about nail polish that strikes a particular nerve. My previous book, Raising Boys Without Men was attacked on grounds similar to Beckett's pink toenails. Some had a problem with my stories of single and two-mother families who were raising happy, empathetic, well-adjusted and, yes, masculine boys. One of them had a son who liked to paint his nails -- much to the concern of other parents. The same son, it should be noted, had to be dissuaded from going to school with sharpened sticks taped to his fingers because he wanted to be like the X-Men's Wolverine.
I hope that Jenna saves the ad. I hope she saves the hyperventilations of the commentators. I hope that some day she pulls them out, for an object lesson and a good a laugh about how utterly stupid some can be about the things that do and do not matter in the journey to who we are.
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I'm 60 years old and remember in kindergarten who was gay, don't you? We didn't talk about it back then, but we knew. My children were born right after Viet Nam and I was a pacifist and refused to give them guns - did it work? No. They built them from Lego’s and anything else they could! Let your kids be what they want to be - it's already programmed in anyway. Just love them with all your might - advice from a grandma.
It is fine that they wanted to cause this contraversy. It gets people thinking and talking about something they may otherwise feel uncomfortable discussing. But really, it's all about marketing strategy/manipulation.
I work retail right now (gotta find work somewhere) and one particular incident stands out.
As I was checking out a woman and her daughter at the register, the child looked up at me and asked, "Are you a boy or a girl, your hair is so short?" Since stupid mom did not feel the need to intervene, I leaned over and asked the little princess, "Does it really matter? You know, sometimes people get very ill and lose all of their hair. Then what do you do? And besides, a lot of men wear their hair quite long. What do you do about that?" Again, mommy dearest did not feel the need to intervene in any way.
I am also given looks, and often comments such as, "This is the ladies' room." Yeah, thanks for the tip. The moment I grow a penis I'll use the men's room. Holy bloody hell, it's not as though I am some young, thin, lithe androgynous girl, I'm older with skin like a baby's ass, and have boobs and hips.
I'm so happy my mother (and later my sister) raised me to be whatever I want and whomever I wanted to be, in whatever incarnation that happened to be.
So yes, there is getting around it for those of us who can see past our noses.
Bigotry, however, is.
That being said, I think that straight men who object to FOX's campaign of freaking out over little things like this, their devotion to making kids uncomfortable in their own skins, ought to paint their own nails pink as a sign of solidarity with...well, everyone that FOX objects to.
Recently, I was in a pizza joint getting a slice with some other cooks and chefs, and a little boy asked me why I was wearing earrings "Like a woman." I shot his mother, who was right there, a rather condescending look while I patiently explained to the boy that I liked my piercings and lots of guys have them. It wasn't the boy's fault -- he was being taught, miseducated, by that whacked out fundamentalist mother of his. Oh, by the way, lady, I've got a couple tattoos, the sort of thing that Axl Rose or Slash might get. Manly enough for ya?
She was passing on bugaboos and neuroses to her boy. Jenna Lyons, by contrast, is teaching her son a healthier outlook.
(Proof: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/18/gay-teen-suicides-and-str_n_850345.html )
I'm tired of the insecure pushing their insecurities on the rest of us, forcing a scouring of the landscape of all that perturbs them; even when they manage to do that, they remain insecure and uncertain at the end of the day because the problem is internal, as much as they like to blame little boys with pink-painted nails. Their problems are no more solved by banning boys from nail polishing than bulls can be milked.
In the end, people need to be told that their problem with kids painting their toenails and similar things is their problem; in the classic stoic sense, they're the ones who have the sense of injury and offense, not the mother or the son. The total outsider that has decided to tear their hair out and blames others for this decision should have no bearing on the conduct of two people that have nothing to do with them, any more than they should have influence over other aspects of people's private lives and relationships.
So yeah, maybe a bunch of us guys ought to paint our fingernails pink and tell the people who get upset that they need to start solving their own mental problems, rather than expecting us to dance attendance around them.
Thanks for clearing that up. I agree, the cultural stereotyping about certain traits being intrinsically male or female is untrue.
I have a huge issue with you calling men wimpy and implying there is a way we need to be.
1st look up estrogen mimicking molecules (toxic waste from companies that gets in water)
2nd realize our bodies are the same in the womb(besides xx and xy)
3rd the bursts of hormones from our mothers sets our external gentiles and some basic brain wiring(again small differences)
4) roughly 25% of males received extra estrogen or not enough testosterone from their mother
5) roughly 25% of females revived extra testosterone from their mother.
(dr john t mannings studies are my source)
add the 5 together; we can see there are at least 4 common types of people walking around. then think about your place as a female telling males how to be...
the best quote i've heard by a women who enjoys equality is: I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body. ~Elaine Boosler
the original fight was to be able to define yourselves as you pleased. wake up sarah you are acting bigoted