The woman behind Raising My Rainbow has a "slightly effeminate, possibly gay, totally fabulous son." (She remains anonymous to protect him.) C. J. loves pink. C. J. steals clothes out of Mom's closet. C. J. demands a Barbie doll instead of a G. I. Joe. Needless to say, C. J. gets a lot of strange looks when he's out in public. While strangers yell that Mom needs to butch up the kid, she defends him, applauding his unconventional choices and creating a storm of controversy that propelled her all the way to the Today show.
Needless to say, the gays have been cheering her along.
With the latest blog entry, though, Mom starts to wear out her welcome. Her tone has changed. Is she being supportive of a girly-boy, or is she, well, egging him on?
He liked the feel and fabric of this number. The long sash in the back sent him over the edge. It was originally the shirt from a boy’s Arabian Nights costume, but that’s not how C.J. prefers it.
He marched himself straight to the garage and found some rope. He cut it with blunt scissors and made me tie it at the waist. Hello belted shirtdress!
See, she loses me here. She's talking about an oversized shirt, tied with rope. Doesn't that make it a tunic? I mean, picture this scene in Sherwood Forest:
ROBIN HOOD: Okay, Merry Men! Methinks it's time to earn your keep. Yon fanciful carriage approaches: everybody put your belted shirtdresses on.
Here we have C.J. wearing a Valentine’s Day-themed dish towel as a stylish heart-flecked skirt. After sneaking a belt from his brother’s room he held the towel up to his waist and insisted that I belt it around him.
St. Valentine himself would be proud.
Oh, puh-leeze. It's a tea towel and a belt. How do you know he wanted to make a skirt? Maybe it's a big loincloth. Until he actually adds pleats, darts or ruching, the jury is out. Because, you know, it's not particularly easy to grab a tea towel and a belt and make pants.
My main complaint here, though, is that C. J. had access to anything in the house. And instead of going into Mom's closet and getting that glittery belt with faux-gold coins that all females seem to own, he went into his brother's closet to get a brown number from J. C. Penneys.
Sure, the kid isn't totally at the end of the Masculinity Scale, but he ain't making it into my Fabulosity Club.
Needless to say, now I'm second-guessing the whole situation. C. J.'s been finding all sorts of odd, effeminate things in the house. I was an effeminate kid growing up among heterosexuals, and I have to tell you, the pickings were slim. Unlike C. J., I never found a big pink pair of bath poufs to play cheerleader. I had to make my own pompoms out of discarded copies of Reader's Digest.
Which is probably why the whole thing strikes me as suspicious.
Anyway, I breathlessly await further chapters. Next week, will C. J. stumble upon somebody's metallic cone bra in the trash? Or will Mom continue to feminize behavior that could be perfectly male? Like, the first time C. J. tries on a bowler hat, will she scream, "Look out, Liza!" and teach him Jazz Hands?
2 comments:
Inevitably, fashion divides the staunchest of allies.
Really, a shirt-dress? Even if he is gay, that's not going to get him at job at Jaclyn Smith.
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