Cross-dressing Spidey

Last weekend we spent the day visiting our friends Anita & Tish. Their little girl Hannah has a drawer full of beautiful, frilly ballet costumes, hand-me-downs from a cousin who needs new costumes for recitals all the time. Luke, who I used to call our cross-dressing truck drvier, has stopped dressing in his "tap" shoes and fancy clothes in this last year, replacing them with the shirts and underpants splashed with superheroes he had never heard of before the boys at school made them required uniform. I was so upset the day I cut myself and he was helping me choose a band-aid, and he said "Do you want a Barbie band-aid, because you're a girl?" I asked him who told him that Barbie was for girls, and he said, "I don't know. I just know. I learned it at school." I told him, "You tell those boys at school your mommy says boys can wear Barbie if they want to, and girls can wear spiderman!"

Anyway, at Anita and Tish's house, Matthew, our friends' son who is seven or eight, dressed up like a princess in all of Hannah's finery and was delighted with himself. Luke put on a frilly pink leaotard with a half-skirt and shiny heart on the front and took off all his other clothes and ran around like that until we left. When I made him take it off to give back to Hannah, he cried and was very upset. Anita asked Hannah to pick out a leotard to give to Luke, and Hannah generously picked out this blue leotard, which Luke has been wearing almost non-stop since. He wore it as underwear under his clothes to school one day last week. Tina had to teach him the age-old secret of pulling the crotch aside so he can go to the bathroom without taking off all his clothes. He calls it his Elastigirl outfit, and on some days his Power Rangers outfit. Sometimes he wears it with the gloves from his Spiderman costume and runs around striking superhero poses. He's a little bit country, he's a little bit rock n' roll. I am so grateful to Matthew and his moms, to Hannah and Anita; I hope we can help him continue to be true to who he is.