The Boy in the Purple Tutu

For the first three years of his life, Wally was a classic boy's boy. He was strong. He didn’t talk much. He liked to jump, push, crash, bump, bang, wrestle, punch, and kick. His resting state was dirty, wet, and clomping around in muddy shoes or—even better—bare feet, outside, on gravel, mulch or hot pavement. He liked cars and trucks okay but more than anything he loved trains. 

In late August, people began to ask him about Halloween (if Christmas decorations go up before Oct 31, everything else naturally has to shift back, right?). What was Wally going to be? A subway train, naturally. Or maybe a conductor. 

But then—something changed. The fascination with trains that had dominated so much of his early years began to give way to something a little bit frillier. Digging through a box of toys in my niece's playroom, Wally found something that intrigued him. He let go of the wind-up car he’d been holding, flung off the walky-talky he’d hitched to his pants, and with the help of his cousins Eliana and Leah, slipped on a…tutu. Tutu! Even the name sounded just right for toddler-speak. He spun around. The world went pink. 

Eliana and Leah take dance classes at a local school. Wally idolized them. It was a simple transitive relationship—of course he’d want to be a ballerina too. At first, I was relieved. Finally, after nearly three years of running around like a train that fell off the tracks, Wally was pretending. This was a giant leap, and not just across the stage. This train-crazy kid was finally "expanding his imagination". This was a milestone we missed somewhere a while back but now Wally was engaged enough with the tutu to sustain a scene, to inhabit a role. 

After that, whenever Wally brought up the tutu, I smiled. That was fun, wasn’t it? I said, remembering back to the day he played dress up with his cousins. On the phone a week before school started my sister mentioned she had a bunch of toys and clothes gathered up, ready to give away. She was bringing over Lincoln Logs. Little People. Various gender-neutral shirts of which there are few tucked away, my nieces’ tomboyish early years having quickly receded into the distant past. At the end of the conversation, she paused. Did I want the tutu? It didn’t fit them anymore. Yes! Of course! It was unorthodox, but it wasn’t ill-advised, was it? And anyway, who cares, whatever, he’d love it. But even as I said yes, something in my stomach kind of dropped. Or maybe that’s just the distorted view I have now, gazing back up the shimmering, icy surface of a strangely slippery slope.

Skip to my sister and nieces visit the following weekend. Buried among the books and legos was the pièce de résistance: the pink, rose-covered tutu. Wally put it on and twirled around the living room. He danced on top of the bed. We had to claw it off of him at bath time. First thing in the morning he cried out for it. I continued to encourage the tutu even as his fascination with it started to verge toward the extreme. Alex was fine with it. The only thing that drove us nuts was that the tutu was too big and had to be fixed with a clothespin to stay on. Every minute or so, after a series of pliés, Wally would come over holding the gathered extra material on his hip and ever so sweetly ask, "May you help me fix the tutu?" 

As the days passed, the irritation of constantly fixing the tutu began to develop into a kind of insular friction in our house, with a lot of sighs and rolled eyes in the evenings. I was afraid that we (maybe more Alex) was becoming fed up with the whole thing not because of the gender-ambiguity issues that surrounded it but because of the simple practical issue of having to constantly attend to it. 

So the story gets even more bizarre. Cut to Buy Buy Baby one day after school where there’s a rack of infant-sized tutu skirts with elastics on clearance for $3 each. I have never bought a piece of clothing for Wally save maybe a swimsuit. But I thought: if I can eliminate the friction around fixing the tutu, it will become less of a hot-button issue. Maybe if there's not the power struggle will Wally's constant demands that we fix it, it will become less valuable, less of a prized possession. Maybe he’ll even go back to begging for a model E train for Christmas. 

Didn't work. 

Instead the wearing of the purple tutu—a tutu now that wasn’t handed down, that didn’t just appear one day alongside a box of old wooden puzzles, but one I specifically bought for him—(how to explain that to people?) just became ever more of a compulsion. It began showing up not only over pants, but without any pants at all, not only inside the apartment but out, not only among family members, but surrounded by strangers on the streets. 

Be careful bargaining with preschoolers. The only thing they’re willing to trade is something they were never allowed to have in the first place. For them it’s always a win-win.

It’s raining on Wally’s first day of preschool. He already has on sweatpants, a long-sleeve shirt, sneakers, and the ladybug jacket handed-down from his cousin Leah. I thought it was axiomatic that you don’t wear tutus to school. Not so to a three-year-old who had never been to school before. 

After much stomping and flailing about, Wally agrees not to wear the tutu to school as long as he can wear it immediately.

“Tutu is for after school?” He asks, still wearing it.

“Yes, after. I guess."

“When you pick me up I can put it on?”

“Maybe. Just take it off and let’s go. We’re going to be late.”

Preschoolers are like those Vaseline-y pigs in, what is that children’s book where the wolves can’t catch the slippery pigs? Wally just kept slipping right out of my hands and running off to another room. Finally I caught him. 

“Tutu is for the playground?” He said, as I wrestled it off him.

“Okay, yes. The playground, whatever. Let’s go.”

And so it was said. The playground was protected ground.
* 

To the boy wearing the purple tutu in our playgrounds around Chelsea, the reactions have been mixed. Many moms are supportive. As they pass by they sometimes shout out, “Great style.” Or "That's so sweet." They tell Wally, "I love your skirt." Or tell me, "That's great. He’s an individual.” Others think he’ll be a fashion designer. Some think he’s just a preschooler. “That’s so 4. I bet he never takes it off, right?”

Right.

Not even when kids ask: "Is that a boy or a girl?" 

"It's a boy wearing a skirt.” (Another child pipes in.)

“Are you sure?”

“Trust me, it's a boy." 

Some are critical— "Why are you dressed like a princess?" they ask. I've even seen a group pointing and laughing on one occasion. That’s what really got to Alex. He doesn’t mind Wally wearing the tutu, but hates the idea of us sending him out to the wolves, with no protection, acting like everything’s normal. “We should at least let him know it’s not what most boys wear,” he cautions.

In the elevator riding up the other day a neighbor seemed supportive. "Let him wear it." Then followed with the one-two-punch: "The kids will tease him so badly he'll know never to wear it again." 

One father said hi to Wally in his unusual get-up recently then turned to me. "I'll pretend I didn't see that." I said something back about how I thought in Chelsea of all places a purple tutu on a boy wouldn’t be a big deal, to which he snapped back, "Gay doesn't mean cross dressing". Even my father, who runs a group of transgendered vets at the V.A. asked over Rosh Hashanah, “Where’s that tool belt we got him?”

Before school in the mornings, more bargaining has been taking place. It is not just the tutu now that Wally adores, but everything girls get to wear. He stares in the mirror pulling his hair back. He goes in to school some days with pigtails, other days a headband, a necklace, a bracelet or a ribbon tied around his shirt. His teacher thinks it’s a good idea to “phase out” the object of fixation, to gradually transition to more socially appropriate things. Alex gets me to agree to “tutu-on days” and “tutu-off days”, but the purple tutu continues as a regular feature on the playground. 

Alex says I am naïve and suburban, having come from a town where my friends and I could be outrageous and cross boundaries without any repercussion. But in the NYC public school hopefully Wally will attend in a few years, boys don’t wear tutus. It’s not so much, “What will people think?” as “What will people do?”

Of course Halloween is coming up, and Wally wants to be—no need to wait for it as you probably already guessed—a princess. To me it seemed like a good idea. Isn’t Halloween the one occasion when you can dress however you want, without regard for what’s socially appropriate? Isn’t social inappropriateness, outrageousness, disguise and outlandishness kind of the whole point?

Alex’s mother has zero tolerance for the whole situation. She changes the subject when Wally touches her earrings or tugs at her skirt. In her world, gender roles are not ambiguous. Boys don’t wear skirts. Boys are not princesses for Halloween. She sends him home from a mid-October visit with a brand new Thomas the Train costume tucked in his bag.  

On Halloween, Wally’s teachers let him wear the tutu along with the train costume. He tells people he’s a “princess and a train”. The teachers call him a “prince”. Wally is supremely happy, flouncing around. He is still getting looks, but he still doesn’t care. 

Then Halloween is over and it’s back to the daily routine, and back to the hard part again. Back to gray pants, (“Why do I have to have a pants day every day?”) and navy blue turtlenecks with a ribbon around the waste that “can be like a tutu”. What Wally really wants now is not the costume, or the tutu, or the princess gown, but just to wear a skirt. Like Penny, like Abby, like June, like Lilly, like Katie, like Skylar…like Eliana and Leah. Why can’t he just wear a skirt? “No costumes allowed in school” doesn’t satisfy. Those kids are not wearing costumes, they’re wearing dresses or skirts. For people with names like Anna and Willa, everyday is a tutu-on day. Even terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad days. Even in school. 

I know I’m supposed to be continuing the phase out but I’ve flat-lined at alternating, with a ribbon or bow substitute for school. Most days I pick different battles. And I am stuck on how to explain to Wally why—other than at dress-up times—he can’t wear a skirt, not to the playground, not to school, not to a party, not to Thanksgiving. What is the reason, really?

Because I don’t want him to be made fun of? Because I don’t want to send him out unprotected into a cruel world with a giant “kick me” sign on his back? The tutu is getting pretty torn and ragged now. Will a Jewish explanation do? “It’s a Shmatta.” How about a WASP approach: “It’s simply not done.” And many moms who see him in second position about to barrel down the slide continue to be supportive, saying of course boys like girly things – sparkles, wands, headbands, pink shoes, sequins, glitter and the like. Why wouldn’t they? Most days I set off from the playground full of renewed energy to defend the boy in the purple tutu for whatever critical comments are about to come our way. 

It’s December now, and one day I realize the “Why can't I wear a skirt” questions are for the most part being replaced with…“I’m getting bigger?” That’s an easy one. “Yes, you are.”

“I can ride the Acela now?” That’s the fast train. 

“Not yet,” I answer.

“When I’m four?”

“When you’re a little older than that.”

“I’m four now?”

“Not yet. Soon.”

The tutu days continue.

“Wally, listen.” I said today, before we head to the playground. I’m still trying to figure out how to explain what it is I have to explain, to protect him, to let him know that I think it’s okay, but some people don’t. You’re a rebel not a slave? Express yourself, but some people won’t approve? How do I put it, simply, clearly, so that something that really doesn't make sense (boys can’t wear skirts or dresses or tutus) makes sense to him?

We’re on our way to the playground. He’s slipping out of sight, laughing. “Wally, hold on. I have to tell you something.” We’re on the walkway across the street now, heading past the blacktop. He’s running ahead.

“Wally, wait.” He’s darting around the corner, tearing down the sidewalk to the playground gate. “I just have to tell you one thing.” 

He’s not listening. He’s not turning around. “Wally, boys don’t wear tutus” I call after him.

He stops long enough to turn back and smile at how silly I am being. Boys don’t wear tutus? Clearly that’s not the case.

“Sometimes they do,” he says. And he’s off.