HugMonkey was dressed like a typical little boy. He looks like a boy, right?
Except on this particular day he was wearing blue nail polish. I had been painting his sister's nails the night before and he wanted in on the action. Lovebug was the same way when he was 3. Of course, Lovebug had been content with clear nail polish, so no one ever noticed. But HugMonkey loves blue almost as much as he loves green, so when he saw me painting his sister's nails blue, there was no way he would settle for clear.
And, honestly, he's three. I didn't see why he should have to.
But the kids on the playground, they couldn't handle a boy-looking child wearing nail polish. It came up again and again. I noticed a few adult eyes widen too, though the adults didn't say anything directly. I felt myself over-explaining about how he wanted to copy his sister, how he was too young to understand why something as fun as nail polish is only for girls. I restrained myself from describing drag queens, the grunge movement and Alice Cooper to the sheltered grade schoolers.
Explaining everything to Hot Guy, I worked myself into an indignant lather about how little boys should be able to wear nail polish without people being confused about their gender. He pointed out that he had merely suggested that clear nail polish would have bothered people less. I started to feel like an asshole.
Why the hell should I care if people question HugMonkey's gender? Don't I profess to believe that I'm a gay man trapped in a woman's body? Don't I believe that gender and sexuality are continua? Doesn't he consider himself a boy, anyway? And isn't he only three? What kind of person actually spends minutes out of her day telling an 8 year old how much her nail polish wearing 3 year old loves trucks? And if he didn't love trucks, if he loved dolls and princesses too, does that somehow mean he's not a boy?
Apparently there's some part of me that's very attached to gender norms. If I had a child who didn't follow gender norms, I would love that child and let him/her be who s/he wanted, no matter what people said. I believe that. But for whatever reason, thus far my kids have been very gender normative. And having someone question my normative 3 year old boy's nail polish totally threw me for a loop.
Have you ever/would you ever let your little boy wear colored nail polish? Would you question the gender of a boy looking child wearing nail polish? Am I way more conservative than I thought I was?