August 10, 2012, 5:03 pm
When Does a Boy in a Dress Become Something More?
By KJ DELL'ANTONIA
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/when-does-a-boy-in-a-dress-become-something-more/What's So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress? asks the headline of The New York Times magazine. What follows is a complex study of an even more complex topic: the world of boys who don't conform to their gender expectations.
[...]
It's a world that stretches from boys who eventually see themselves as transgender to those who affirm that they're boys, but boys in dresses. (As one says, referring to a soccer-fanatic classmate, "he comes to school every day in a soccer jersey and sweat pants, but that doesn't make him a professional soccer player.")
Based on the stories of the families profiled in the article, you know that world when you're in it. There's some moment, for parents, when they realize that the boy in a dress isn't just playing dress-up, but exploring something that might be more complicated (no matter how you feel about gender norms).
