Via the Los Angeles Times, a column about two lesbian moms pondering whether to allow their 4-year-old son to go “treat or treating” dressed as a princess. The moms seemingly are concerened about imposing gender stereotypes on their son by telling him girls become princesses and boys become princes (or wizards)—and they’ve “posted pictures on Facebook of Luc in a princess dress with a tiara.” But they’re fearful that unenlightened neighbors may say something hurtful:
after all the soul-searching is the very simple message [one of the moms] wants me to share: Remember the tenderness of children’s feelings if you open that door on Halloween and find a boy in a princess dress among the innocent trick-or-treaters.
Sexual orientation and gender identity may be hard wired, but this story raises all sorts of issues (including unanswered questions about whether the boy has any male role-modeling, and whether this is a 4-year-old transgendered person—or a case of gender-studies ideology run amok).
Alas, I tend to agree with the Times commenters who felt airing this “dilemma” in the paper, to be archived (and searchable under the kid’s name) forever, doesn’t seem like responsible parenting, aside from the expected responses charging that this is evidence of what happens without a mom and a dad.
15 Comments for “A Little Princess?”
posted by a.j. on
I like the comment left at the Times, “I bet this kid was taught to pee sitting down.”
posted by BobN on
Guess you didn’t tune in to the previous versions of this story which involved straight parents and their princess boys.
I don’t understand the need to put oneself on display that this generation of young whippersnappers seems to have, but this is hardly the first case. I think it’s particularly daft of this lesbian couple for precisely the reasons you cite, i.e. all the stereotyped arguments. What’s odd is that you appear to side with the arguments…
posted by Houndentenor on
Why do people freak out so quickly over these things? He’s four. He saw a movie and is now fascinated with the idea of being a princess. Tomorrow he’ll want to be a pirate. Or a dinosaur. IMHO the worst thing a parent can do is freak out over every little thing. He’s four. It’s not a life choice. It’s just a costume.
posted by BobN on
If he watched certain Disney films, he might want to go as a dinosaur princess! Well, an alligator in a tutu, which is close.
posted by Jorge on
What? That came from a Disney film? I thought it was from that PC game my mother has. But Josephine’s my favorite!
Anyway, dumb, wishy-washy parenting is hardly the province of gay couples alone. Nothing wrong with letting him dress up like a princess, I suppose. But make your decision and be done with it, right or wrong.
posted by BobN on
Yikes. My mind is slipping. I was thinking of Fantasia. Hippos. Hippos in tutus…
sigh
posted by BobN on
In my defense. The tutu-ed hippos are dancing with crocodiles (or alligators, I get confused).
posted by Lymis on
Yes, the hippos were in tutus and lipstick and mascara, while the crocodiles were in capes and little Robin Hood hats.
On the other hand, other than gender-normative assumptions and stereotypes based on the outfits, there really was nothing indicating that the hippos were girls and the crocodiles were boys, if I recall.
posted by Jorge on
Noted. Josephine’s still better.
On the other hand, other than gender-normative assumptions and stereotypes based on the outfits, there really was nothing indicating that the hippos were girls and the crocodiles were boys, if I recall.
Gee, I should hope not. It’s a cartoon, after all.
posted by Lymis on
While my most strongly held conviction is that I don’t get a vote on this, if I were called on to give my opinion, the thing I’d want most to know is whether this is the kid’s idea or the parents. (And, given the specifics, it seems clear to me that this is the kid’s idea.)
And I don’t know anything whatsoever about these women, but I’d put money on the fact that they aren’t modeling “princess dresses and tiaras” as normal behavior around the house. Straight moms don’t model tiara-wearing as standard feminine behavior, and the butch quotient is, in my experience, a tad higher among lesbians.
So claiming that this costume choice reflects his mom’s failure to model traditional male behavior is a serious overreach, unless these are some pretty seriously non-standard women. What it may well reflect is a “failure” on their part to sufficiently traumatize their son into a reflexive terror of stepping outside male gender presentation norms.
By extension, the fear is that if his mothers don’t teach him otherwise, he’ll never find out that society has strong opinions of gender normative behavior. And that’s a serious crock.
I’d rather hope that this is a case where they are laying the groundwork of “we support you in all your choices because we love you unconditionally” while being prepared to deal with it when the kid runs into the buzzsaw of other people’s prejudices.
It’s not like he won’t face enough of that when people find out he has two moms, no matter how rigidly they program him. Let him have his tiara time.
posted by Lori Heine on
Lymis is right. These parents may actually be a tad uncomfortable about this themselves. I know if my four-year-old boy started running around in a tiara, I wouldn’t be exactly sure how to handle it.
I have a tiara, myself. A friend gave it to me last weekend. It has a little picture of Snow White on it, and when I press the central jewel, it flashes. I also smoke cigars and love shooting guns at the range.
Like Walt Whitman, “I contain multitudes.” Maybe there’s nothing wrong with raising a child that does, too.
posted by spaniel on
I remember dressing up as a cowboy. I didn’t become one. I dressed up as a pirate. I didn’t become one. I also dressed as a princess. I didn’t become that, either. I remember wanting both toy cars and toy dolls. I had the standard issue parents: one mother, one father, and I had an older brother to model “appropriate” behavior to boot. Still turned out gay. My older and younger brothers turned out straight. One Halloween costume says nothing about the child’s sexual orientation, or whether his parents have appropriately “modeled” male behavior. Come to think of it, my straight older brother once dressed as a princess, too.
posted by Cranky Professor on
Excellent point. I regret that turning the world upside down (a usual definition of carnival) has turned into a diagnostic.
Cross dressing used to be a common expression of ‘fun’ – I was looking at some pictures of a cruise my mother took with her parents back in the mid-50s (shortly before she married). One of the evening entertainments was an All-Man-Marriage, in which the bride an bridesmaids were all cross dressed. My mother insists this was a pretty common idea of fun. These were all M.D.s on a post-medical-meeting cruise from Miami to Havana, by the way — fine carnival atmosphere!
I myself never had the urge to go as a princess and still somehow grew up gay. And my sister, who went as a cowboy about as often as she went as a kittie cat, is straight, married, and 4 children.
posted by Jimmy on
“Cross dressing used to be a common expression of ‘fun’…”
Especially to a boomer generation, to whom the cross-dressing Mr. Television, Milton Berle, was everyone’s “Uncle Miltie”.
posted by TomJefferson III on
Dude, Yeah, um the kid is like, four years old and its just a Halloween costume. This is not a sign of ‘bad’ parenting (lots of sexist bs boiled in that) and I can see the parents being worried about the kid being picked up (and reminding people to be nice), but getting overworked over a boy wearing a princess Halloween costume might just be an itsy, bitsy silly.
Wasn’t this the topic of an episode of the Jim Belushi series (saw it on reruns). My Life With Jim or something like that.