By way of explanation, he told me about a boy in his third-grade class who is a soccer fanatic. ?He comes to school every day in a soccer jersey and sweat pants,? P. J. said, ?but that doesn?t make him a professional soccer player.?
nabe, whereas boys like P. J. or Alex are viewed with distress, especially the older they get. For that reason, last summer, as Alex?s parents contemplated his start at the local elementary school, they feared children there might bully him. So they decided to forbid dress-wearing to kindergarten. Alex didn?t take it too hard. By then, his dress requests had petered out to every few weeks anyway, and he typically wore boy clothes, though he still liked wearing a rainbow-bead necklace and nail polish. Besides, his parents had told him that socks, shoes, nail polish and jewelry were up to him ? a way to express himself while safely testing the waters.
Toward the end of the first week of kindergarten, Alex showed up in class wearing hot-pink socks ? a mere inch of a forbidden color. A boy in his class taunted, ?Are you a girl?? Alex told his parents his feelings were so hurt that he couldn?t even respond. In solidarity, his father bought a pair of pink Converse sneakers to wear when he dropped Alex off at school.
Alex?s teacher, Mrs. C., jumped in, too. During circle time, she mentioned male friends who wore nail polish and earrings. Mrs. C. told them that when she was younger, she liked wearing boys? sneakers. Did that make her a boy? Did the children think she shouldn?t have been allowed to wear them? Did they think it would have been O.K. to laugh at her? They shook their heads no. Then she told them that long ago, girls weren?t allowed to wear pants, and a couple of the children went wide-eyed. ?I said: ?Can you imagine not being able to wear pants when you wanted to? If you really wanted to wear them and someone told you that you couldn?t do that just because you were a girl? That would be awful!? ? After that, the comments in the classroom about Alex?s appearance pretty much stopped.
It took Alex several weeks to rouse his courage again. And then, about once a week, he would pull on his pink socks and sparkle kitten sneakers and head boldly off to kindergarten.
