Emotional Fallout from a Mommy and Me Pedicure

I know I don't post over here much, but this isn't really a running related post, so I thought I'd put it over here instead of on Not Just A Half.  But this is definitely something I need to get off my chest.

For the past 2 summers, I've taken my youngest to get a pedicure.  It's kind of our end of summer hurrah.  B is 6 this year.  We go to the salon in the mall which has a kiddie size pedicure chair, complete with a fuzzy bear head on the back of the chair, so it looks like a giant stuff animal.  B loves the pampering and the awesome colored toes! This year, the toes were painted a brilliant blue with sparkles.  It's a great hour of "Mommy and Me" time, without my husband or my oldest.  We chat about important things, including summer camp, what we think first grade will be like, the best part of vacation, anything that pops into B's head.  It's a great time and we both love it and look forward to it.

This year, two days after the pedicure, B comes home from camp and tells me the some of the kids were laughing, because they said his toes were "girly".  Yep, B is Brian, a 6 year old boy, who plays flag football, loves video games, and is in Cub Scouts. And he loves getting pedicures, having his toes painted any shade of blue and has been begging me to take him to get a "finger-cure" (aka manicure).

After a nice conversation, I think I got most of the story out of him.  On Monday, a bunch of boys and one girl were laughing at his toes during Water World. One of the counselors noticed and told the kids to knock it off.  Then, on Tuesday, one of the boys was trying to take off Brian's sneakers, and a counselor told him to knock it off.  The boy said it was a game, then proceed to try to take another kid's sneakers off.  To me, it sounded like he was trying to get Brian's sneaker off to look at his toes, and then covered it by going after another kid.

Brian never got upset, he was more annoyed than anything.  He wanted to change from sparkly blue to a robin's egg blue, because, although he never directly said this, I think he felt it was the sparkles that made the kids decide his toes were girly.  Brian didn't view "girly" as bad, just as "not him" (in his words "I'm a boy, my toes are boys").  We talked.  His main concern was not to be laughed at again.  We found a pair of swim shoes for the next day.  He was thrilled because now he didn't "need" to take his polish off.  I told him I was very, very proud of him and I cried myself to sleep that night.

There's two things that just stab my heart about this.  The obvious one is that MY kid was picked on.  I am proud of how he handled it, but I wish didn't have to happen.  That's the other one, that it happened.  That in the enlightened state of Massachusetts, children are still taught that girls wear nail polish and boys don't.  That "girly" has a negative connotation.


If you look around, you see programs to encourage girls and women to break into typically male dominated fields and activities.  Groups such as Society of Women Engineers, Engineer Girl, Girls on the Run... and of course, the women centric races, such as Zooma (where I'm an ambassador for the Cape Cod race this year), which promote a non-competitive spirit.  I think it's wonderful that these organizations are giving women a safe place to grow, and be themselves, but have you stopped to think about the other side of the coin?  Where are the organizations trying to encourage men and boys to break into female dominated fields? (I'm going to guess that it's because "the pay isn't good in those fields" but that's a discussion for another day). Why don't we teach boys how to be less competitive instead of excluding men to allow women to be non-competitive?

If we truly want to have a society, where men and women are viewed as equals, we can't just encourage half of society to break through the barriers.  We have to educate the whole society to allow the barriers to be removed.  I know that there will be two boys on this planet that will help remove the barriers, but I would love to hear from parents of other boys who will help.  I need to know you're out there too.