Mom defends her son's right to wear a tutu
Jen Anderson Shattuck’s three-year-old son likes to wear tutus.
“My three-and-a-half-year-old son likes to play trucks. He likes to do jigsaw puzzles. He likes to eat plums. And he likes to wear sparkly tutus,” she explains in a Facebook post that recently went viral.
“If asked, he will say there are no rules about what boys can wear or what girls can wear.”
But while heading out to the park with him recently, Shattuck was “accosted” by a man who demanded to know why her son was wearing a skirt.
“‘I’m just curious,’ the man said. ‘Why do you keep doing this to your son?'”
While the man was unfamiliar to Shattuck, she quickly got the the sense that he had been watching her and her son for some time.
“He wasn’t curious. He didn’t want answers. He wanted to make sure we both knew that what my son was doing — what I was ALLOWING him to do — was wrong,” she says.
Speaking directly to her son, the man told the boy that what his mother was doing was wrong and that she was a “bad mother.” He even went as far to say it was “child abuse.” Then, he proceeded to take a picture of the boy saying, “Now everyone will know.”
Shattuck was so horrified by the event that she called the police and filed a report. But she’s mostly upset that her son now feels threatened.
“My son does not feel safe today. He wants to know: ‘Is the man coming back? The bad man? Is he going to shout more unkind things about my skirt? Is he going to take more pictures?'”
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Despite the upsetting event, Shattuck will not be stopping her son for dressing the way he wants any time soon.
“I will not be intimidated. I will not be made to feel vulnerable or afraid. I will not let angry strangers tell my son what he can or cannot wear.”
“I will defend, shouting, his right to walk down the street in peace, wearing whatever items of clothing he wants to wear.”
The post has already been shared more than 43,000 times, with a flood of comments from other parents, some even sharing their own photos of their kids dressing as they please.
“My 2 year old loves trains and ‘Hello Kitty,'” says Maggie Fairman Williams. “He prefers pink to blue. He loves wearing necklaces and dancing in the mud. I love watching him revel in things with no understanding of societal gender assignments- he just loves these things because he does.”
“There was a little boy in our family who wore red pajamas on his head for several years. It was like having long red hair for him. He has grown into a loving, kind, understanding teenager who we couldn’t love more,” shared Marilyn Christmann.
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