Sarah & Ian Hoffman

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Ladies Home Journal

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I was happy to see Louise Sloan’s essay Green Nail Polish and Gay Marriage this week in Ladies Home Journal, one of the more conservative women’s lifestyle mags.

Sloan’s son wanted to wear green nail polish, and, with a bit of trepidation and some justification (“It wasn’t a pink tutu.”) she allowed it. She and a conservative male friend were discussing the green nail polish and this year’s extra-joyful Gay Pride weekend in New York (isn’t that the sort of conversation we all want to have with a conservative friend?). The friend, after judging her harshly for allowing her son to wear nail polish, said of NY’s Pride, “All those people in the street, representing their viewpoint. I gotta represent mine.”

My viewpoint is this: if you’re a man who doesn’t like gay marriage, don’t marry a man. If you don’t like green nail polish, don’t paint your nails green. But if you tell other people they can’t marry another person of the same gender, or that they can’t paint their nails green, that’s not expressing a viewpoint. That’s being bigoted.

And I have to ask (and not for the first time), why, really, should a boy not wear nail polish? We know that allowing a girl to wear pants does not make her a lesbian, and most of us know that even a tutu on a boy won’t make him gay. We have many accepted social rules that make a great deal of sense, that prevent people from hurting other people, or themselves, or property. But arbitrary rules based on outmoded bias don’t actually make any sense at all, and, rather than preventing harm, they cause it. It’s hurtful to shame a child for liking what they like, and, big picture, it’s actually bizarre to disallow cross-gender play for boys when it’s acceptable for girls. It’s time to let boys—whether they like trucks or tutus—be boys.

Sloan’s essay was thought-provoking. It was interesting. And it’s terribly exciting that it even appeared at all. I can’t imagine a mainstream magazine like Ladies Home Journal publishing such a thing just a year ago, before Jenna Lyons tore the roof off the mutha’ of the boys-in-nail-polish taboo.

Let’s support this growing national conversation. If you are so moved, please read the essay and comment on it. Let’s get the word out that there are many, many parents who think green nail polish—hell, even pink tutus—are okay for boys.

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Book Giveaway: Donovan’s Big Day by Leslea Newman

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Please note: while comments on this post continue to be welcome, the giveaway is now over.

 

 


Leslea Newman, of Heather Has Two Mommies fame, has recently published a new picture book, Donovan’s Big Day, a delightful story about the day a little boy’s two moms get married.

Told from Donovan’s perspective, the book is beautifully written for the 4-to-8-year-old set, with sweet, cheerful drawings by Mike Dutton. It builds suspense from the moment Donovan wakes up to the culmination of his big day, and manages to convey Donovan’s nervousness, seriousness, and joy to the reader. As I read:

When the tall grown-up in the long black robe said, “I now pronounce you wife and wife,” Donovan threw his arms around his mothers while everyone clapped their hands and stamped their feet and whooped and whistled and hollered, “Hooray!”

I cried. I cried again the second time I read the book, and the third, and every time I’ve read it since, including when I heard my son read it to my daughter.

Donovan’s Big Day isn’t just for kids with same-sex parents—it’s a book for all children. Despite the political life of The Issue of Gay Marriage, at its heart gay marriage is simply marriage, the joining of two people who love each other. Donovan’s New Day is not about politics or strife, but simply what it’s like for a child to witness and participate in one of the most purely wonderful moments in a family’s life. Leslea wrote the book after watching gay and lesbian couples get married on May 17, 2004, the first day same-sex marriage was legal in her home state of Massachusetts. “There were many, many children present that day,” she said, “children of those couples, children as bystanders…participating in all the joy.”

Every child should get to read this book, or have it read to them by their teary-eyed parents.

(And by the way, I can hardly believe Leslea has written yet another book. Three months ago I reviewed her then-new board books Mommy, Mama, and Me, and Daddy, Papa, and Me, both of which you’ll want to give to every toddler you know. She is a prolific writer, penning not only picture books but middle-grade and teen novels, and, for adults, fiction, non-fiction, humor, short stories, and poetry. It’s worth poking around her website to learn more.)

Leslea was kind enough to send me an autographed copy of Donovan’s Big Day to give away to one of you. I invite you to enter for a chance to win this hardcover book by commenting on this post below (if you’ve received this review in your email box, just click on the title of the post and you’ll be taken to my blog, where you can enter a comment). You’ll need to either leave your email address in your comment or friend me on facebook so I can find you if you’re the winner.

Thank you, Leslea—for giving away this book to one of my readers, for writing this book, and for all you do to make this world a more wonderful, joyful place.

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The Mother Company

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The Mother Company—dedicated to social and emotional learning for parents and kids—recently posted a two-part series on childhood gender expression. I was honored to be asked to contribute an essay for the first part of the series, about the first time Sam went to school in a dress.

The second part in the series, an interview with Gender Spectrum founder Stephanie Brill (author of The Transgender Child), did a fantastic job of articulating best practices for parents of gender-nonconforming and transgender kids.

As I read the readers’ comments on the series I felt how sad and angry I am that Sam has to do the work to change society, every time he comes up against one of the limits of “acceptable” gender expression. I hate it each and every time he has to tell another kid it’s okay for him to be in the boys’ bathroom, or put up with teasing by classmates over his long hair, or think about whether he will have a hard time at school for the color of his pencil case. I hate that my child has to push society’s boundaries, that he can’t just relax into the work that previous generations have done (as I do, as my daughter does). I wish that he could simply be himself, the way a girl in jeans heading out to soccer practice can just be herself.

But I also felt immensely proud. Sam may be doing incredibly  hard work just to be himself, but the extraordinary byproduct of his work is that he’s changing the world.

I imagine the first girls who wore pants to school. I imagine the first women who took “men’s” jobs. I imagine the first African Americans who didn’t toe the color line, and the first gay people who married. My son is one of these pioneers. He is paving the way for future pink boys to be who they are without ridicule. I wish that it was not so hard for him. But given that it is, I could not be a prouder mom.

 

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Praise for our books

“With books like this, minds open, perspectives blossom and everyone has more choices.”

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Jesica Sweedler DeHart, librarian June 27, 2019

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