A Sydney mother-of-three, whose four-year-old son likes to dress as Elsa from Frozen, has opened up about the reactions of strangers, and even friends and family.
Jennie Sager, 40, said her son Noah loves to wear an ‘Elsa’ dress and she doesn’t want to ‘squash his individuality’.
‘You see people roll their eyes or sigh at you or laugh at you as they walk past but we don’t want them to laugh at him and then he notice and start feeling ashamed,’ Ms Sager told Daily Mail Australia.
‘We want him to be free to express who he is, we don’t want him to hear people say “what are you doing let your son wear a dress”, we don’t want to squash his individuality.
‘He has a huge imagination and we love that sense of purity. He doesn’t know that society considers it strange, that purity in children gets destroyed as we get older.
‘But who determined that blue is for boys and pink is for girls? It’s just something that society created.’
‘We just see it as a kid loving a movie and loving something bright and shiny, we never batted an eye.’
Ms Sager said that there has been mixed reactions from parents to Noah wearing the dress but some have come up to say how “awesome” they think it is.
‘Although it’s a compliment it’s a bit like, well they don’t go up to girls who wear superhero costumes and say the same thing,’ she said.
‘It seems to be that people think it’s awesome for a girl to be in a tough boy outfit but when boys do it and wear a girls costume it’s not treated the same way.’
Noah fell in love with Frozen two years ago and owns two Elsa dresses, Elsa shoes and pink Elsa pyjamas as well as a crown, Elsa and Anna dolls among other things, Ms Sager explained.
‘He often doesn’t answer me unless I refer to him as Elsa,’ she added.
‘He’s a preschooler with a future in stand-up comedy. He is also sensitive, playful, and an incredibly loving soul who is by far the most generous in our family,’ she went on.
‘He does not care what other people think. Noah well and truly beats to his own drum.
‘But, if society has its way, it will crush this individuality out of him and he will become just as boring as everybody else.’
She said family members have asked her if she thought Noah ‘would grow up to be gay’.
‘Others asked me why I wasn’t firmer with him and why would I let him wear a dress,’ she wrote.
‘Given the current state of society, where people are marching for gender equality, refugee rights, and global tolerance, it seems we’re forgetting about toddlers and preschoolers and the stereotypes we instill in them from a very early age,’ she continued.
Ms Sager said that she and her husband concentrate on showing their children the both of them doing a variety of different tasks and mixing up gender roles.
‘How you raise your children is clearly your choice, but my decision is to raise my boys… to be confident, proud, loving, kind, and accepting of absolutely everyone,’ she wrote for Yahoo.
We loved this story a while back – Mum tells boys they look beautiful wearing trousers or a dress
There was also an awesome story a few months back of the dad who let his son dress up as Elsa. WINNING!
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