Pink for boys...

My son loves pink.

He also loves green, and yellow, and blue, and purple, and red, but generally if you give him a choice between two colours and one of them is pink, he's gonna choose the pink.

This is mostly a non-issue for me - if the child wants a pink balloon, give him a pink balloon!  I mean, pink is a pretty colour.... what's not to like?  But you'd have to live in a different world than the one I do if you want to raise your children without any influence from the gender stereotypes that exist in our society.

The Attack has so far never let such influence sway him from what he wants.  When confronted about his choice of a pink bouncy ball by a friendly shop assistant who asked him "Don't you want this green and blue one instead of the pink girls one?"  He responded simply by saying: "Colours are for everyone."

Colours are for everyone.  It became our standard response whenever the need arose.

I took him shoe shopping today.  He wanted red shoes, which surprised me a bit, but hey lets roll with it.

We tried on 50 pairs of red shoes, but after thoroughly considering each pair he decided against them.  We then came across some green shoes with lights that came on with every step.  Glowing green shoes!  He was sold.

Until we walked two more steps and found that they also came in pink.

Glowing pink shoes!!!!  He was ultra sold.

I told him we'd keep looking, and if he didn't find anything else he liked, we'd get the pink shoes.  He insisted on carrying around the shoe box in case somebody else brought them while we were otherwise occupied.

We didn't find anything that came remotely close to the magnificence of glowing pink shoes, so headed up to the counter to buy them, at which point he turned to me and said:

"Can I wear these shoes every day?  My friends at kindy will be so excited to see them."

Damn.  I so did not want to have this discussion.

I took him by the hand and led him to a relatively empty aisle to have a talk.  

Me:  "Ash, if you want these pink shoes, you can have them, but some of the kids at kindy might say things to you, like that they are girls shoes, or that pink is a girls colour.  You know that colours are for everyone, but some people think different things."

Ash:  "........"

Me:  "What do you want to do?  If you want the pink ones, we can buy them right now."

Ash:  "........Maybe I could have the green ones instead?"

Me:  "If that's what you want."

Ash:  "Yeah!  The green ones look like slime!"

We got the green ones.  And I wanted to cry.

I wanted him to have those pink shoes, they made him happy.  But I couldn't let him walk into kindy tomorrow expecting everybody to love his new shoes, and have him slammed with hurtful comments.  He needed to have all the information before he made his decision, if at that point he still wanted the pink, then that was fine by me.

Why does this matter to people?  IT'S A FREAKIN COLOUR!!!  As far as I'm aware, liking the colour pink has never hurt anyone, and how somebody in this day and age can be judged because their eyeballs find it aesthetically pleasing is beyond me.

We all care about what other people think - It is human nature, tangled up in our desire to be accepted.  Most people just have varying levels of what they're willing to give up.  What they're willing to become. 

But there are some who know that they will not be accepted by everyone, and are at peace with it.  It's not that they don't care, it's that they understand.     

It take strength and courage to like what you like in the face of disdain and criticism, much more than what it takes to be the one doing the criticizing.  

And are these not attributes that we all want to help instill in our children?  Strength.  Courage.  Throw in some honour and we have a cocktail for awesomeness.

The Attack chose the green shoes.  He chose acceptance this time.  School - even kindergarten - can be a brutal place, and sometimes you make decisions based on social survival.  I've been there - I pretended to love music all through high school even though it didn't really interest me much, simply to feel like part of the group when others were discussing it.  

Growing up is hard - we are faced with a constant stream of what is cool or popular, and what is definitely not.  And when our opinion differs from the norm, we have to judge what is worthy of standing up for, and what we'd rather keep to ourselves.  

As long as we don't allow this influence to bully us into changing what we actually believe, let people think what they like, because there comes a time when we grow into ourselves, and none of that crap matters anymore.  

Tonight he asked me to make him a balloon-animal monkey in a tree.  A pink monkey, on a purple trunk, with yellow leaves.

I think we're going to be OK.

xox