Dirty Little Secret

So I painted Lovebug’s nails the other night.

Why?

Because my almost 4 year son asked me to, that’s why. He asked without whining, with just the sweetest expression on his face. I had just painted Ironflower’s nails a lovely pink. I started painting her nails a few years ago to get her to stop sucking her thumb. Totally worked, but now she wants me to keep doing it.

Plus we may have watched RuPaul’s Drag Race together. (Look Hot Guy’s been gone a lot lately and sometimes I need adult TV that isn’t going to scare the kids. Plus, hello? Drag Queens? I totally wish I could be one.)

Anyway, the point is that I pointed my son’s nails. I used clear, which I explained as the appropriate color for boys (unless they are drag queens, but I didn’t want to remind him of that, because what if he’d then asked for red? I’m sure our family already gives the staff of their preschool enough laughs.)

I like to think of myself as a feminist. I raise my children to think that they can be anything, that toilet cleaning knows no gender and that drag queens are cool. But my boys are obsessed with trains and cars and my daughter loves princess Barbies. . . . . .and I’m really comfortable with that.

I felt sheepish when Hot Guy asked me why Lovebug’s nails were so shiny. He just shook his head at me while refraining from comment.

So I’m curious to hear from other adults, would you paint your son’s nails? And if so, would you force clear on him? Or let him go his own creative way?

(I want to state for the record that if he wants to paint his own nails when he’s a teenager or an adult, I’m fine with it. It’s the fact that’s he so little and that someday he may call me from his therapist’s office and talk about how I feminized him as a preschooler that freaks me out.)