There's always some hullabaloo or another going on in the world, some earth shattering controversy that sends the media into a frenzy of viewer polls. And so it was with the recent J.Crew ad depicting a mom painting her young son's toenails a bright shade of pink. Both mom and son are smiling, but apparently there are many folks out there who are not. Half -- yes half -- of the folks responding to one unofficial-but-who-cares-let's-report-it-anyway poll found the thing horribly offensive. Really? Would it have been okay if the mom had chosen neon blue?
One of the happiest days of my life was the day it became not only acceptable but fashionable for girls to wear boy-style sneakers (or, for you folks in the Midwest, gym shoes). I couldn't pitch my pointy-toed white Keds quickly enough, couldn't wait to slip into my clunky new Adidas with the three stripes on each side. If my brother had taken my pointy-toed Keds out of the garbage and worn them, I might have questioned his fashion sense but I'm not sure how much of a fuss I would have raised about his manliness. Of course, I can't speak for his friends.
Therein lies the problem, I suppose. Though mean girls may snicker and look askance at tomboys with unkempt hair and baggy jeans, they don't hold a candle to the boys who will have a field day with one of their own should he dare do show up in a skirt. It's a fact of life; I get it.
But why are adults fanning the flames, dictating what a little boy can or cannot do, be it in the privacy of his own home or the relative privacy of an ad for an adult clothing store. (I'm guessing most of the kids in the boy model's nursery school class do not peruse magazines where they would come across the offending photo.)
I bet there are lots of perfectly virile men out there, men who would never even think about taking a little blue pill, who sported plenty of ribbons and bows and dresses and, yes, even nail polish back in the day while their sisters played with Matchbox cars and shouted obscenities at the driverless vehicles. It's what growing up is all about, isn't it? And when it's time for sexual identity to really kick in, there are bigger issues for kids to deal with than nail enamel and clothing.
We've come a long way from the days in which a boy would be teased for wearing an earring. Well, some of us have.
The "models" were actually the head of J. Crew and her son. I think all little kids love having Mommy paint their toes or pay any kind of attention to them. I think the world needs to get a life.
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