Should You Dress a Boy in Pink to Make a Political Statement?
Amy Alkon: Nitwit Mom Thinks Parenting Is About Making “A Political Stance:”
Stephanie Kaloi writes at The Good Men Project about the girly way she’s been dressing her 4-year-old son:
I have spent most of my son’s nearly four years on the planet scouring thrift stores and online shops for fun, colorful, and bright clothing. It’s been easy to meander back and forth between boy’s and girl’s departments as, for the most part, a lot of the clothes could work on a boy or girl.
Granted, my son has worn his fair share of puff sleeves and rainbows, but MOST of his clothing has been boy-leaning, with a dash of glitter on a sleeve.
…My desire to dress my son in bright colors that could work for a boy or girl is half a political stance and half a frustration with how despondently boring I find most boy’s clothing.
how despondently boring I find most boy’s clothing
Clothing for men and boys is supposed to be boring. To quote Beau Brummell, “If anybody notices what you’re wearing, you are not well dressed.”
Well that lady won’t have any grandchildren.
I don’t know, I could picture it turning out very “Boy Named Sue” with him learning to fight after getting picked on for his ridiculous clothes. By the time he’s old enough to buy his own clothes he’ll be an unquestioned alpha.
Wonder if she is always getting clothing to go with his future black & blue bruises.
Yeah but in that song…the dad named the boy that because he knew it would make him tough.
This woman is trying to suck the tough out of the boy.
Well, at least, she may never get to SEE any grandchildren because he and his family may never visit the way things are going– gone as soon as he’s old enough.
If there is any justice, her son as an adult will become a right-wing, anti-feminist, NRA member.
For now, I feel sorry for the kid. I hope he learns some fighting skills. He will need them in school.
Given the way that the up-and-coming generations are starting to realize/hate the baby boomers for what they’re leaving them with (and that some kids as young as 13 are questioning why men get the short end of the stick), there is some substantive hope.
This bring back memory of my own experiment with the pink shirt after watching Don Johnson in Miami Vice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXS2TKoEbxU
This is why I do not let my sons where the pink shirt. I live in furniture store with a thousand mirrors and fellow Don Jonhson with the pink shirt and so empowered a thousand of me leave the store and gay beast men get frisky with me and I run fast to escape them being 10 times more handsome than this Don JOhnson fella who is now so butt ugly from wearing pink shirt he will not show his fat meat on wiki
Whereas I remain striking handsome with six pack stomach and I stay away from the pink shirt
Keep your sons free of the pink shirt, please.
I kinda wonder why Alkon always had (the few times I went to her blog) a link to the Good Mangina Project. I think I read in several places that the GMP was funded and maintained by Ms Magazine, and is just one more attempt to pussify American men. So why is she griping about what they like to do?
That copperhead has a serious case of Roberta Wickham Syndrome (Ern knows what I’m talking about).
This is Child Abuse by a nitwit bent on self-promotion; nitwits, please spare the innocents.
Not just war but left/liberalism is not healthy for children and other living things.
Poor kid. He’s a human being, not a political statement. But it’s all about the mom’s politics, not his life.
All children in the family I was given have denim overalls and white oneies until they master potty training. Once that level of cognitive ability is achieved they dress themselves in season appropriate clothes of their own choice, not my parental issue.
Children are people who are to be taught how to handle freedom from a young age; they are not canvasses for addled parents to sketch their political views.
@rbj You said it better with less words, my bad.
Liberals… the personal is not political, not here (just nuts with this, in fact).
His mother is showing her basic selfish desire to paint her political views on everything. Her son is just another canvas. Perhaps this is her way of expressing her unhappiness that the child wasn’t a girl.
It wouldn’t surprise me if her son writes a harsh “Mommie Dearist” style book in about 20 years.
It’s clearly narcissism. The mom’s needs, wants, and interests are the overriding concern. The child is simply a vehicle for getting some of those needs met.
(sorry if this gets posted twice, didn’t seem to work the first time)
It’s narcissism. The mom’s needs, opinions, and desires are the primary concern. The child is just a vehicle for her to get those needs met.
And you people worry about the younger generations. They’ll rebel and go just as far right as I have. Because that was how I rebelled.
Then again Texas is the home of what I would call “Outlaw Conservative”. In fact, it’s a pretty valid label, if you think about it. Unexpected sorts vote R down here. Tattoo artists, bikers, you know the sort that aren’t thought of as R but are actually solid red.
This reminds me of my rebellious teenage self who had to dress different for the sake of nonconformity. Thankfully I eventually grew out of that need so I don’t have to force it on my children. I do have a friend whom I love dearly who feels a need to force gender neutrality on her children. I love her but I do feel bad for her children because it is obviously about her own needs and insecurities not her children’s.
I wonder how she would dress her daughter?
Reason #4,238 that a child needs a father.
Of course, I would. Sacrificing a boy’s emotional well being and potentially scarring him for life is a small price to pay for making a political statement. If the child was a girl, it’d be a different story though.
I don’t have any problem with pink. In fact, when I was a kid, I carried a pink comb. I also wore pink plaid pants and a pink shirt. It was the 70s, you know.
My problem is with yellow. Bull riders, cowboys do not wear yellow. Not under any circumstances, not at any time. Pink is one thing; yellow is quiter another. The former means you’re accomodational; the latter means you’re a coward.
I don’t get this whole color scheme. I’m not afraid to wear pink. But I refuse to wear yellow.
Men wear greys and blues. They do not wear browns. They wear black leather lace-up dress shoes, with a matching dress belt and watch band. Silver all around–the buckle matches the watch band.
Pink is acceptable, depending on the situation. Yellow is out of the question.
I don’t know who wrote this article. I just know that he or she doesn’t know anything about men’s fashion.
I think this is why nature helps kids forget their first few years of life.
If women were not “empowered” this would happen a lot less often. Women only make “political statements” that are in line with the current PC trend. That’s so corny.
Dressing herself in men’s clothes is a political statement, dressing her son in presumably girl’s clothes (or just “fabulous” ones) is abuse (I’m sure he’s not liking it) even if only in principle.
My sons wear camouflage clothing and other colors, but never pink, and Sweet Lord in heaven no glitter.
I like pink, personally. Always have a few Brooks Bros pink buttondowns. But the puffy sleeves she’s talking about might get tangled up in various firearm, fishing, or sporting implements. Or catch on fire at the gas range.
Women who conflate their own personalities with those of their children are ill; she’s clinically narcissistic at best, sociopathic at worst. Her son doesn’t even exist as a human being, he’s merely a prop in some seedy pop culture morality play. Why doesn’t she just spray paint her MOTD on his face and send him out into the world? Something like, “DON’T LOOK AT HIM LOOK AT ME!”
Guess what? The original piece makes no mention of the boy having a father (I guess that’s why they call it The Good Men Project; they know when to disappear, so as not to interfere with Good Women crippling their y chromosome vanity offspring). I know this fact surprises us all.
I’m sure that dressing him in girls clothing is just the tip of the iceberg in how this woman is warping her son. When this poor kid grows up completely unable to function in the real world, and finally breaks down and shoots up a Kids’R'Us girls clothing section… no doubt miss Kaloi will be the first one to blame the gun.
What an idiot. She shouldn’t be a parent. Her son will be messed up because she wanted to try an experiment.
Speaking from experience, that kid had better learn to fight cause starting about 5th grade the other boys are going to start beating the snot outta him. And long term, the kid’ll be so ostracized early on, he’ll have real difficulties relating to people his whole life.
Hopefully he’ll realize it’s all mom’s fault.
A woman friend noticed that I have lost a lot of weight and said how much fun I would have shopping for new clothes.
I told her I have just bought the same khaki and dark blue pants to replace the ones that are too big, and done the same basically with my shirts as I have moved from 3x to 1x.
She seemed perplexed. So was I.
She saw my situation as one of possibility and celebration while I saw it as having to go back to the store for something else.
Trey
I too prefer the simplicity of quasi-uniform dressing, and after I blew out a knee and gained 15 pounds, I bought the same clothes, only in a larger size. Certainly makes dressing easier to know what one wears, and what this one wears is black, white and blue, with the occasional red or patterned button-down shirt. And now that the weight is coming off, I don’t have to reconfigure my appearance, just resize it again.
On the other hand, I am an effeminate liberal, in the sense that I standardized on colors and combinations by noting that Jackie O, in her later years, appeared often in the simplest of black and white color schemes.
Well Bellanca, just because we disagree about politics does not mean we have to disagree about the important things in life, like fashion!
And Jackie defined class and fashion for a generation or two, in my mind, you could do much, much worse.
Have a great week and keep posting.
Trey
And how many times has she whined to her girlfriends “where are all the good men?” I’m sure there is no connection between single females looking at children as lifestyle accessories, playmates, and an anchor into their past adolescence and noticing later men don’t meet her standards.
If she was raising her children to avoid minorities, she would be a racist. If she raises her child with no input from a man she’s encouraged with “you go girl!”