Last week, Megan Fox shared four Polaroids of her family in an Instagram post. She and husband Brian Austin Green are famously private when it comes to their three sons, Noah, Bodhi, and Journey, and many of her followers were delighted with the update. Naturally, most commenters gushed about how cute the boys are. But of course, the trolls also came out in full force. Why? Because 4-year-old Noah is wearing a Frozen dress in the snap.
Some people left nasty comments criticizing Fox's parenting and telling her it was "wrong" for her son to be wearing a dress. Some said she should "let boys be boys," others added that "this is highly confusing for the kid" and "society is lost." But many others came to Fox's defense, stressing that her photo simply shows a child wearing a costume (and looking adorable in it). "She's being a mom, she's supporting and loving her kids," one commenter said. "If he wants to wear a dress, it's his decision."
Paparazzi photos of Fox and her family have captured Noah and Bodhi wearing dresses a few times before. In a 2016 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Fox explained that she was raised in a strict Pentecostal household where her church dictated what men and women were permitted to wear. She said that she's eschewed any kind of similar rules when it comes to her own family.
"The boys can wear dresses," she told Kimmel. "There are no rules—you can be whatever you want to be in my house!"
Fox isn't the only celeb who lets her kids wear what they want regardless of gender; Liev Schreiber's son dressed as Harley Quinn for Comic-Con last month and looked amazing.
Unfortunately, parents like Fox and Schreiber are often criticized for their kids' choices, or accused of making their children dress a certain way to further some ~unknown agenda~. In a popular 2014 blog post about his son's love for dresses, writer and actor Seth Menachem explained: "It used to embarrass me slightly when [my son] wore a dress in public. And it wasn’t because I cared about people who thought it was weird that my son was wearing a dress. It was because I cared that they thought I had chosen to put him in a dress. As if there was an agenda on my part to use my son as a way to break societal norms." Menachem eventually realized that steering his son towards more "masculine" clothing choices was only harming their relationship, and one night he even put on a dress, too.
Just a quick reminder: The clothing a child chooses to wear doesn't inherently say something about their gender identity, sexuality, or anything else. And even if a kid is dressing in a certain way to experiment with their gender presentation, that's obviously fine and not something deserving of criticism. Claiming that certain clothes are strictly for boys or girls can be really confusing for children, who should be allowed to experiment with what they like even if it falls outside of certain "norms."
Also, gendered fashion rules are pretty arbitrary anyway. For instance, there's a long history of people seeing blue as a "much more delicate and dainty tone," therefore befitting girls, Michelle Finamore, a curator at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, told NPR. Pink was viewed as "a stronger and more passionate color" that was a perfect match for boys. This didn't change until after World War II, Finamore explained.
And remember how for much of history, it was pretty unconventional for women to wear pants? In fact, women weren't officially allowed to wear pants on the U.S. Senate floor until 1993. Hopefully, criticizing boys—or their parents—about wearing dresses will one day seem just as absurd as questioning women for wearing pants.
There are many reasonable things to be outraged about in this world. A child's favorite costume is not one of them.
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