Boys and Boas
Written By Barbara Hey
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Now after 15 years of teaching, Otte has seen numerous preschool boys in gowns and pumps. "Most do it because it's fun, or because they think it's funny," she says. "High heels make a great noise when you stomp around in them." For Henry, these clothes were fun.
At the time, I didn't know any other little boys inclined to sequins, but later Henry's younger cousin became Dorothy for an extended period. "It was Halloween and his two friends were going to be the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow," says his mother Diane, who lives in Massapequa, New York. But when Joseph, then 4, saw the Dorothy ensemble, there was no way he was going to be anything else. "He insisted. He wanted the wig, he wanted the ruby slippers."
When he wore the full Dorothy getup to the school Halloween party, the other kids didn't question his costume choice, but a few parents did. "They were freaked out I'd let him dress like a girl."
For months after, Joseph dressed as Dorothy to watch TV, and for an even longer time, he'd squish his feet into the ruby slippers. But then again, "who wouldn't want magic slippers that could take you anywhere you wanted to go?" Otte points out.
I know now that most boys are done with all things froufrou by around age 6 or 7 (and squirm years later when you show them -- or magazine readers -- the photos; Henry, I applaud your forbearance). But at the time, all I could do was talk to Dee, quietly and on the sidelines, and wait.
It was at around age 5 that Henry, and later Joseph, began to absorb the standards for boy behavior, and found other outlets for sensory-gratifying dress-up. Joseph turned to baseball uniforms and clean white shoes; Henry became a Power Ranger.
Henry also shifted to wearing underwear as a hat, another manifestation of imagination that needed to be confined to the home. He began to create his own garments, taping his feet, arms, and hands with layers of colored masking tape that eventually needed to be painstakingly extricated off his body with scissors. Tape and scissors; he'd become a guy, his own kind of guy.
