IN A NEW ad for J.Crew, the company’s president and creative director Jenna Lyons paints her son’s toenails pink. She says, “Lucky for me I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon.” A majority of FOX News Twitter users polled on the story said they did not disapprove.

Notice the boy’s hair too, part of the latest preference for girlish styles in boys. My son’s barber told me of a horrible incident in which a mother came in with her son, who was about nine, and insisted he keep his hair long despite the boy’s tearful protests.                                               

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Art writes:

This wouldn’t be such a problem, and would simply stay as a a small boys silly fun, if it was not for the tendency to politicize this or generalize it. Just because he has an interest in this one activity, his mother, and others’ may make the argument that he is “transgendered”. They are already exploiting by putting him in an ad. I had some interest in girls toys when I was a small boy, but when I played with them I always played games of wars, revolutions and coup attempts. I liked Disney’s Anastasia toys precisely because of that! As this boy grows older he must be allowed to express his natural masculine tendencies. Unfortunately, there is a possibility that his caretaker’s may not approve.

Laura writes:

It’s wrong to shame little boys who show an interest in dolls or girls’ things or to make a big deal out of it publicly. Let them play with these things privately at home and then distract them with other toys or activities if it becomes a persistent habit that is making it difficult for them to play with other boys.

Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:

My reaction to the story about mothers who groom their male toddler children girlishly has something in common with Art’s, but is perhaps stronger.  When I look at the photograph that illustrates the story (“Jenna Lyons paints her son’s toenails pink”), I see a young mother who would likely have preferred a female child and whose primary interest is not the child, but the substitutive gratification of her thwarted preference.  The hoary idea that boys should be boys and girls, girls is rooted in centuries of experience and should be taken seriously.  Then again the symbols are too blatant to ignore.  Okay, painting the kid’s toenails might be innocent “fun,” but painting them pink,which is regrettably no longer merely a color, suggests the usual panoply of liberal, antinomian penchants.  This is not, as I see it, a story about little boys who like to play with dolls; it’s a story about self-indulgent mothers who like to play with their male children as though the male children were dolls.  My guess is that Jenna Lyons is courting grief, not only for herself but also for her son, who risks becoming a “Nancy Boy” whose gym classes will be a six-year-long nightmare.

 Laura writes:

Yes, this is clearly about the mother’s desires. I interpret it as her not wanting a daughter but wanting a boy who is a girl too. In other words, all things at once, the dream of androgyny fulfilled.

James P. writes:

I’m surprised the boy sits still for having his toenails painted. Most boys wouldn’t. I concur with the view that this is something she wants, not him. Hopefully he will develop the strength to resist her efforts to smother and emasculate him.

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