Clothes
“Oh! Look at that sparkly dress! I want that!”
Why is it still such a hard concept for people to grasp that clothes are for everyone? Who cares if a boy wants to wear a dress? No one bats an eye when a girl wants to wear sweatpants and a baseball cap. But when a boy wants to go outside of what society deems acceptable, it’s an issue.
Why does it matter what a person wears? Shouldn’t it be about how the outfit makes them feel? Why are young children constantly told that’s for boys and that’s for girls?
There’s so much I wish I had understood earlier. So much I wish I had been taught. So much I wish I had known. I would have handled certain situations differently if I had the knowledge I had now. But I guess that’s part of life. We live, we learn, we grow.
I grew up in an environment where gender stereotypes were the norm. Boys wore pants and shorts. Girls wore dresses, skirts as well as pants and shorts as long as they were from the girl department. Boys played with trucks. Girls played with dolls. But they could also play with trucks if they were interested in trucks. But boys definitely didn’t play with dolls unless they were appeasing their younger sisters. Boys didn’t wear pink. And they most definitely didn’t wear a skirt.
I remember a day in early elementary school when my cousins came over to borrow skirts as a gag. It was opposite day at school. A day during spirit week where you could dress as the opposite gender. They were going to dress as girls. It was something to laugh about. It was something to make fun of. No way would a boy ever wear a dress on a normal day.
I think about how unaware I was during that time about what gender truly was. How unaware we must all have been. A boy wearing a dress was unacceptable. It was something to be made fun of.
As I grew up, this was the mindset I had. A tomboy was okay to be. But a boy in girls clothes was not acceptable. I am glad my own children are not growing up with this mindset. The internet has been a great thing for my kids’ generation. The world is at their fingertips. We simply now have to type a search in google and thousands of items come up. Books about gender, not just for adults, but for kids. Stores that are gender neutral. Clothing brands that are for everyone. More and more children grow up understanding that gender is not the anatomy you are born with, but what you feel. What you identify as.
This is something I had to learn as I became an adult. It was knowledge that was not readily available to me while growing up. I’m sure, If i had asked around, I would have gotten some answers. But I didn’t really know anyone that really understood gender until college. I didn’t have the resources I have now. I wish I did. I would have treated Hayden much differently in the beginning.
I remember going to Walmart with him when he was around two or three. It was around Christmas so all the Christmas dresses were out. We walked past the girls clothing section and he reached his little hands out of the shopping cart trying to grab one of the dresses. He wanted that dress. He loved how it looked. And I just moved him past that, saying that was for girls. I still didn’t understand at that time. It was perfectly fine to play dress up at home, but to buy him an actual dress was not going to happen.
I wish I knew what I know now. I wish I had fully understood. I thought I was being accepting, letting him dress up and play with dolls at home. I thought I was protecting him. But I wasn’t. I was stifling him. I was preventing him from being who he was. I was thinking about every gender stereotype I grew up with and applying it to my child. I was mixing up sex and gender.
We can’t change the past. But we can learn from it. And I am so thankful Hayden was born to me. I am learning so much from him. My children are learning so much from him. Their friends are learning so much from him. This generation isn’t going to grow up with the same stereotypes I grew up with. This generation is already off to a better start. They have access to so many wonderful books. They have clothes that are for everyone. They have friends who will grow up knowing that this is who Hayden truly is. I know not everyone is at the same place I am yet. But I am hopeful that we will all get on the same page someday.
