My son used to ask me to paint his toes for him when he was little because he saw me doing mine, and his dad used to paint his nails black. I see absolutely NOTHING wrong with a boy wanting to paint his nails. Absolutely nothing wrong with it. Nail polish is not strictly for girls. It says "nail polish" on the bottle and not "female polish."
I am not one to believe that there is anything out there that is truly, 100%, gender specific. My son used a coin purse as a purse for his binkie when he was a toddler, he specifically asked for it as well. He knew that when me or my mom would grab our purse that it meant we were leaving he house. So, at 18 months old he asked for his own purse to hold things in for when we would leave. He would wear my headbands around the house because he thought they looked cool. He would play in my make-up and use lipstick as "war paint." He would ask to wear my lip gloss because it made his lips feel "slippy".
Now that he is 10 he doesn't do those things anymore, and a part of me misses the days where he hadn't been corrupted by society to think that things are supposed to be gender specific. There are days, though, where he will ask for my red chapstick, not only because it is cherry, because he likes how it changes the colors of his lips. He also enjoys helping me buy clothes or purses. He will tell me which ones he likes and which ones he doesn't like.
As I was reading the comments on the page that posted the article I started to notice a very disturbing trend. The majority of the mothers had no qualms about their son having their nails painted, but there was a decent amount of women that seemed to think if their son painted their nails then it would lead to them wearing make-up, dresses, putting their hair in pony tails, and eventually becoming gay or transgender.
I screen shot a few of the comments. At first, I did it out of disbelief that people honestly believed what they were typing. Then, I decided that I needed to say something. Here are nine of the comments that I saw:
I am shocked by the amount of people that still believe being gay, bisexual, transexual, or transgender is because of the choices that persons parent made when they were younger, by the things that they were "allowed" to be around. One person even thought that if her son did "turn out to be gay" that he would eventually "become a woman". Do they refuse to believe that people are born that way, are they in denial, or are they really this uneducated?
Who decided that dolls, dresses, make-up, nail polish, head bands, long hair, etc. was only for girls? Why is it more acceptable for a girl to break the gender stereotypes, but not a boy?
Why would it even matter if a boy came out as gay later in life?
I can tell you right now, if my son did come to me later in his life and tell me that he is gay I would not love him any less. I would not treat him any different, blame myself because I let him paint his nails, turn my back on him, or anything like that.
I can't wait until the day that gender stereotypes no longer matter.
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