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Fairies
and Queens
Otis is three and a half. So is Rosie,
his best friend. She lives in North
Carolina, Otis lives in Maryland. Otis
loves balls —footballs, tennis balls, soccer balls, ping pong balls. He also loves vivid, sensual beauty-- shiny
pink boots, flowing velvet gowns, pigtails in bright bows. Rosie like pants and animals. When they are together, Rosie lets Otis pick
out two of her dresses for his own. He
chooses a light green cotton sundress and a white dress with small pink roses,
a lacy collar, and shiny white buttons up the back. He proudly models. He is
beautiful.
Rosie’s dresses instantly become Otis’s
favorite clothes. A few days after
arriving home he comes downstairs dressed and ready to go to nursery
school. He’s radiant in white lace and
pink roses. He just needs help with the
buttons.
His
Dad and I look at him and beam. Then we
look at each other, recognizing the fear we see in the other’s eyes. Girls can—and should!—be cowboys,
astronauts, physicists and firefighters as well as ballerinas, fairies and
queens. Yet, boys should not aspire to being a fairy or a
queen. Please!
If Otis’s wider world is going to
ridicule his beautifully dressed self, then it is our responsibility to
dissuade him before he goes out. We
know we will hurt him if we tell him he can’t, mustn’t, wear his dress to
school. But we also know “they” have
the power to inflict a much deeper wound.
We dare to try one alternative. I call his teacher. I explain the situation. She says “I think it’s going be okay. I’m going to make it be okay.” I don’t
know how she’ll do it, but I trust her.
Mostly.
Off to school in his beautiful dress goes
Otis, bow carefully tied in the back.
Off with him go I, knot tied tight in my stomach. That knot doesn’t start to unravel till an
hour or so after I drop him off, when I call and am told everything is
fine. The knot dissolves into tears of
joy when, at noon, my beaming baby boy bounds into my arms, his white dress
covered in sand and dirt, to tell me all about his happy day. Later his teacher tells me that the children
had gathered around him when he
arrived, and had begun to question his clothes. But in one small act of brilliance she had gotten out a treasure
trove of costumes and had dress-up corner open and ready to go. Boys and girls alike spent the morning in
high heals and feather boas, wings, gowns and sequins. By the end of the day more than one little
boy had expressed interest in having beautiful clothes of his own.
One day weeks later, after cycling
through his cowboy suit, Power Ranger outfit,
Peter Pan tights and Ninja robe, Otis is back in his white dress. He needs new shoes. Hand in hand we walk to town—he in lace and
rosebuds, me in a t-shirt and jeans. We
poke around our favorite store filled with an eclectic assortment of
goodies. Way in the back we find a pair
of gorgeous turquoise and blue plaid high-tops. He puts them on. They fit
perfectly. What joy! Toward the front of the store he finds a
silver tiara and a shiny wand crowned with a gold star. He falls in love. I agree. We pay for our bundle: plaid high-tops, gold
wand, silver tiara -- the little boy in the white dress with pink roses puts them
all on. He beams at his glorious self
in the mirror. The “The Lion King” has
just been released and the song “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” is
everywhere. As we step out of the store
and onto the sidewalk, my little boy holds his gold wand high and sings at the
top of his lungs: “I just can’t wait to
be queen!” Two women sitting on a bench just outside the store collapse
laughing. “Thank you thank you thank
you,” they gasp, “you just made our
day. No! Our week! No, no! Our life!”
I’ll never know if they knew he was a
boy. I hope they did.
Suzanna Banwell has been a Human Rights Lawyer for the better part of the last 20 years.
She is now home full time with her two sons and loving every minute of it. Or almost every minute.
E-mail Suzanna Banwell
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