FWIW, I have three sons – now aged 18 to 26. If they had wanted to dress up as a girl at any age, I’d have had no problem with that. I can’t remember whether any of them actually have, though it’s quite possible: some of them spent many years in amateur drama groups, and all sorts of things are possible there.
I also have a daughter, who also has spent a lot of time in amateur drama, including a lot of Shakespeare. I remember one very amusing act at a festival that shewas is – she wasn’t one of the actors is this – with a teenage girl and boy playing Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado. The funny bit was that the girl played Benedick and the boy playted Beatrice. I don’t think the experience would have caused them lasting psychic damage.
I think most people would realize an 18-yr-old out carousing the streets dressed as a cheerleader/Snow White/a nun is just dressing up like that for the occasion. The number of oddly-dressed people who gather round the harbor on Friday night is amazing. I don’t think anyone seriously believes they wear that kind of stuff regularly.
Eh, I don’t think it’d be a problem. He’s three years old, and it’s only for Halloween.
An older boy might even get away with something like that by going about it with humor. For example, if he dressed up as a girl and acted as if it were to get laughs. As a child, I had a HUGE box of old clothes for playing “dress up”, and when we had family get togethers at my house, my male cousins would put on dresses and hats and parade around and act goofy.
Personally, I believe telling the kid he can’t do it just makes it more of a problem. The more fuss you make, the worse it gets.
Well, having no sons (and since I’m done making babies, I’m not likely to ever have a son), I can only speak hypothetically. I wouldn’t have a problem with a little boy dressed up as Dora. Conversely, if my four-year-old daughter wanted to dress as Bob the Builder, I wouldn’t mind that, either. At that age, it just doesn’t matter.
There are a lot of female firefighters. But this particular costume was under a very large sign marked “BOYS COSTUMES” and the tags even say boy’s costume on them.
I don’t have a problem with this but I did get some quizzical looks when I told the grandparents.
Your answer really shocked me, but at least you admit you have a double standard.
Of course a kid should be anyone he wants to be for Halloween. And especially (as others have said) a three-year-old! He’s just a baby. Exactly what horrible thing is expected to come of this?
I also think it would cause more problems than it would solve, since the boy is frickin 3 years old. If it’s the type of costume with a mask, it would drop the chance of harassment to around 0% since you usually cant even tell the gender of children that age without seeing the face.
If it were an older child, however, I would still let them do that, but if they did not understand that there was a chance that people would make fun of him for it, I would bring that topic up somehow. If he still wanted to do it, I’d let him.
I think it’s fine if he wants to be Dora, I really don’t think it will have any future ramifications. But make sure to take lots of pictures so you can show them to his girlfriends when he gets older.
I don’t know why it’s “shocking,” and I don’t think anything horrible would come of it. At three years old, the kid probably doesn’t even yet make the connection that Dora is a female character. So this case in particular, it’s no big deal at all. But I’d still encourage the boy to go as a character like Dora, but not as Dora. Why? For the same reason I’d dress my male baby in blue PJ’s and my female baby in pink.
It’s just the idea of the thing – there’s a structure in gender roles that exists, and it exists for a reason, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. This isn’t the same thing as my being some big hairy guy in a wife-beater shirt and one hand down his pants freaking out if he sees his son playing with a doll, snatching it away from him and shoving a dump truck in his hands instead. It’s more like what they say about abstract art – you don’t start out your first painting doing cubism; you begin with the traditional stuff and then start to find your voice. There’s nothing wrong with taking a child that young and saying, “this is what boys are like, and this is what girls are like,” and then letting the child as he grows figure out how much of that he wants to accept or reject.
I don’t think the goal is a completely genderless society; it’s a society that’s open enough that we’re not bound by gender but instead just get structure from it. There’s nothing wrong with telling males to be masculine and females to be feminine, as long as you acknowledge that they might have their own take on what it means to “be a man” or “be a woman.” At 3 years old, the child doesn’t have a clear take on that yet.
That’s because gender roles are in the process of evolving, in particular for women in the west. The prevailing message for women is “you can be whatever you want,” while the prevailing message for men is “be a man.” That’s why the character of “Dora the Explorer” exists in the first place, while you don’t see characters like “Stanley the Nurse.”
Believe me, that’s not an attempt on my part to diminish anyone’s job (for the record: I’ve dated male nurses, and I know that there’s nothing inherently “feminine” or, for that matter, “masculine” about the job). I’m just pointing out that the change is a gradual process, and we’re in the middle of it. And because of that, there’s currently a double standard. Women wearing slacks: cool, even the norm. Men wearing skirts: still “weird.” It may not be fair, but it’s the way things are for now. And just as people say that nothing horrible will happen by letting the boy go as a girl, I say nothing horrible will happen by encouraging him not to until he’s old enough to realize how boys and girls are different and decide for himself how many of society’s conventions he wants to rail against.
I dunno, maybe by the time I have children and this is more than just an academic argument for me, things will be different. And a gay man taking his three-year-old son out trick-or- treating dressed as a female character would be a complete and total non-issue to everyone, not just the people on this board. But for now, it would seem very weird, and for now, I would have a problem with it.
I too was put into drag for halloween as a kid. Perhaps a result of my mother never having a daughter to dress up. It really seemed to frustrate her that I couldn’t get the hang of crossing my legs like a lady. I turned out straight and it’s not like I’m some kind of pervert. Well actually…
When my older brother was two or three, my mother sent my father to Sears with him to by Winnie the Pooh PJs that were on sale. The whole gang was on sale, and my dad let Jon pick what he wanted. My brother’s favorite character at the time was Piglet. My father therefore bought him pink piglet pjs. My mother looked at him a little ascanse, but Jon turned into a relatively normal young adult, well if you call physical chemists normal …
I should’ve clarified. While he is quite big and rather hairy (everywhere except the top of his head, alas), my Hubby isn’t the least bit neanderthal. He’s highly educated and extremely liberal. That’s what has made some of his responses so surprising.
