A viral photograph of a young boy who chose to wear pink shoes on his first day of preschool has sparked intense debates online. A Facebook user identifying herself only as his sister posted the photo to the “Have A Gay Day” page and wrote:
“Yesterday my mom posted a picture on Facebook of my 5 year old brother Sam wearing a pair of shoes he picked out for his first day of preschool. She explained to him in the store that they were really made for girls. Sam then told her that he didn’t care and that ‘ninjas can wear pink shoes too.’
However, my mom received about 20 comments on the photo from various family members saying how ‘wrong’ it is and how ‘things like this will affect him socially’ and, put most eloquently by my great aunt, ‘that sh*t will turn him gay.'”
The photograph has received more than 120,000 likes and has been shared more 19,000 times.
Similar to the controvery sparked in 2011 when J. Crew ran an ad featuring designer Jenna Lyons painting her young son’s toes pink, people are freaking out that today’s culture is encouraging the abandonment of gender stereotypes. Mommy blog The Stir disagreed with Sam’s mother saying she wouldn’t let her own son wear pink shoes to school because it would “subject him to being bullied or treated unfairly because most people associate pink with girls and blue with boys.”
What do you think? Was Sam’s mother in the wrong?