The other day I was walking through Target when I saw this little boy standing by the kids movies. He pulled out a movie and walked over to his dad, holding it up to him. The movie was a Barbie princess movie and he was excited about it. His dad's response?
"No, you can't have that. Put that back. It's for girls."
The boy sadly put the DVD back and walked away.
It hurts me that his father told him he couldn't have it because it was for girls. It wasn't just "No, you can't have that" or "you don't need that", it was clearly "you can't have that because it's for girls and you are not a girl."
The thing that bothers me the most is that parents are so worried about their children being like the "inferior" gender. If you really think about it, it's completely okay for a girl to be a tomboy. If anything, parents find it endearing that their little girl wants to "be tough" like a boy. The minute a boy wants to play with dolls or do anything that is deemed "girly", they are told they can't do it. They can't "stoop down" to that level of femininity.
Your son is not going to become gay because they play with dolls. That's not how sexual orientation works. Your son is not going to become weak, inferior or whatever adjective you want to use to describe it. They're not going to be "any less of a man" from using girl products.
Isn't the ultimate goal to make your children happy? What if their happiness comes from watching that Barbie movie? What if their happiness comes from playing with dolls? Are you really going to deny your child happiness?
Maybe the parents are trying to prevent the child from being bullied or made fun of for watching something like that. That's the flaw in our society. We see differences and irregularities as a reason to make fun of someone and make them feel absolutely horrible about themselves.
My favorite part about it all is that many of these sons are raised to do what the women do. There's always those phrases going around saying how you have to "keep your woman happy" and a lot of times that consists of doing "girly" things. So what are we stopping our sons from doing "girly" things if they're just going to grow up and do "girly" things for their girlfriends/wives?
If I ever have a son and he decides he wants a Barbie movie, you better believe I'm going to let him watch it. We need to teach our kids that it's okay to be different. It's okay for boys to like girl things and for girls to like boy things. If other parents fail to do this and make fun of our children, we need to teach our children to be strong and rise above the bullies.
Maybe when we can finally teach our kids that they can play with anything or watch anything irrespective of gender, then no gender will be viewed as inferior or superior, but instead, equal. I can only hope.
