I paint my sons’ nails. They are 5 and 7. I steer them towards colors like blue, green, and black glitter. I don’t wear a lot of pink and red polish and they think my pale neutrals are boooooring

Basic biology - the males of a species generally have brighter coloring.

Historically, men have often sported elaborate and extravagant fashions. In ancient Rome, women were once prohibited from wearing more than one color or having too much gold (although silk was forbidden for men so that they would stay tough).
https://www.britannica.com/topic/dress-clothing/Government-regulation-of-dress

For most of history, men have been the ones wearing high heels.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-13/why-do-we-wear-high-heeled-shoes/9135936

Even the whole pink/blue color assignment is fairly recent. When it started, about a century ago, pink as the “stronger” color was assigned to boys and “dainty” blue was assumed to be the right color for girls.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/

While I think men were smart to get out of the high heels, I have sometimes felt sorry for how constrained they are by modern fashions. In formal attire, they get to choose between a black tux, or maybe if they’re daring, a white jacket. For business attire, they can wear a black, brown, grey, or navy suit, but they can choose the color of the necktie to strangle themselves with. Even as kids, sparkly, glittery, and/or frilly things are mainly reserved for girls. Girls are free to wear blue and will almost certainly have lots of blue denim in their wardrobe, but if a boy wears pink, they’re liable to get the side-eye.

My girls had lots of fun when they were younger experimenting with nail art, and painting their nails in general. I don’t see any reason why boys shouldn’t have the chance to paint their nails, too.

Growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the trend was to knock down gender stereotypes. While I rolled my eyes at my middle school English teacher, whose sentences for grammar examples all ran along the lines of “John bakes a cake.” and “Jane fixes the car.”, I think that feminists of that era were right that boys and girls can both make choices outside of the stereotype. While there may be some things (including fashions), that may more generally appeal to boys than girls (or vice versa), there is such wide variation both on preferences at a personal level at any specific time, and at a cultural level depending on time and place, that it just doesn’t make sense to get worked up about restricting something as superficial as fingernail polish to a specific gender.

Anonymous wrote:establishing norms of masculine behavior makes for a stable, and thus safe, society.

weak men make for bad times
bad times make for strong men
strong men make for good times
good times make for weak men

love and support your sons. celebrate the strength and goodness of masculinity. The abridgement of gender norms has left us with a society of institutionally raised children, fatherless murderers, and attention-craved-easily-seduced adults.

We should always accept every human as divinely-inspired and worthy of love. However, we should hold them accountable for their behavior (hate the sin, love the sinner).

If our grand-children are to live in peace and harmony we need to return the core of our societies to one of two-parent masculine & feminine protector/provider nurturer/advocate households.

Children are malleable through puberty and into early adulthood (mid-20's). People who love them should encourage them to conform the the gender norms of their physical sex. This will result in the most good for the most people. Those who make it to adulthood can live as they will, and be loved as humans regardless.

A society without a core of dyad-centered families will necessarily have functions of the family replaced by the soul-less state, which feeds itself and grows like a leviathan. That form, has killed more humans, and crushed more spirits, than any form of "oppressive patriarchy", and will do so in greater numbers as the population grows and technology allows for leveraged control of individuals.

Without gender norms, "if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever".

What a load of crap.

It’s cute.

My son loved having painted nails whenever I got mine done. Lasted on & off until 7.

He is 10 now. Into art, chess, tennis, and parkour. Some of his anime-type drawings have colored nails

Let him have fun exploring this stuff freely before the world rips it away from him. It's part of being a kid and it's all good fun. If you don't let you kid do it, at least teach him that people make different decisions and it's never ok to make fun of someone because of choices in what they wear.

When my son was little he had long hair, liked to dress up in his grandma's jewelry, sometimes wore nightgowns, and had several dolls. He ended up straight and masculine now that he's an adult. Go figure!

Why is this even a question? He's 5. My son wanted multicolored toes. So that's what he got. It was fun!

You and your son bonded over something that made him happy. My 3yo DS always wants his nails painted when I do mine but I don't do it just bc he won't sit still long enough for them to dry.

I have no problem with it but I asked my 12 year old boy out of curiosity what he would think to see a boy with nail polish.

He said that it's not exactly masculine but you don't have to be masculine to be a boy. He wouldn't pay much attention to it, though. NBD.

I asked him if it would matter what color the polish is and he said that colors are colors and they don't have genders.

It lead to an interesting convo, which can be hard to come by with my quiet tween, so OP, thanks for that.

My kid likes it sometimes, so we do it. This week we did his right toenails red and left ones blue to reinforce left vs right.

If he wanted to do his fingernails I would tell him that he might hear from people who say boys can't have fingernail polish but that those people are idiots and it's totally his choice, what color?

If his father derided him for things he likes there would be issues much bigger than nail polish. Some of the husbands here are not exactly quality dad material.

Anonymous wrote:I was having my nails done today when my 5 year old son asked if boys can have their nails painted too. I told him it's not really for boys but if he wanted to try it I would paint his nails for him. On our way home we stopped and picked out some blue nail polish, his favorite color. It was fun watching him get excited over nail polish. He sat on the bed giddy about having his nails done. When I was finished I painted his toes to match. He was so excited he called his grandparents and told them all about it. My husband rolled his eyes and shook his head about this. Let me be clear this was for fun only. I'm not trying to feminize my son.

I would do it for my five year old if he asks. He also asked to get a doll now that his little sister got one. I actually felt bad that we never offered him a doll, I just didn't think of it. I didn't get into gender neutral toys and maybe I should have. I see nothing wrong and if people have a problem with it it's THEIR problem.

Anonymous wrote:establishing norms of masculine behavior makes for a stable, and thus safe, society.

weak men make for bad times
bad times make for strong men
strong men make for good times
good times make for weak men

love and support your sons. celebrate the strength and goodness of masculinity. The abridgement of gender norms has left us with a society of institutionally raised children, fatherless murderers, and attention-craved-easily-seduced adults.

We should always accept every human as divinely-inspired and worthy of love. However, we should hold them accountable for their behavior (hate the sin, love the sinner).

If our grand-children are to live in peace and harmony we need to return the core of our societies to one of two-parent masculine & feminine protector/provider nurturer/advocate households.

Children are malleable through puberty and into early adulthood (mid-20's). People who love them should encourage them to conform the the gender norms of their physical sex. This will result in the most good for the most people. Those who make it to adulthood can live as they will, and be loved as humans regardless.

A society without a core of dyad-centered families will necessarily have functions of the family replaced by the soul-less state, which feeds itself and grows like a leviathan. That form, has killed more humans, and crushed more spirits, than any form of "oppressive patriarchy", and will do so in greater numbers as the population grows and technology allows for leveraged control of individuals.

Without gender norms, "if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever".

Lol wut 🤣🤣🤣

It's always the men that can't do a push-up or change a tire that get caught up in stupid crap like this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:establishing norms of masculine behavior makes for a stable, and thus safe, society.

weak men make for bad times
bad times make for strong men
strong men make for good times
good times make for weak men

love and support your sons. celebrate the strength and goodness of masculinity. The abridgement of gender norms has left us with a society of institutionally raised children, fatherless murderers, and attention-craved-easily-seduced adults.

We should always accept every human as divinely-inspired and worthy of love. However, we should hold them accountable for their behavior (hate the sin, love the sinner).

If our grand-children are to live in peace and harmony we need to return the core of our societies to one of two-parent masculine & feminine protector/provider nurturer/advocate households.

Children are malleable through puberty and into early adulthood (mid-20's). People who love them should encourage them to conform the the gender norms of their physical sex. This will result in the most good for the most people. Those who make it to adulthood can live as they will, and be loved as humans regardless.

A society without a core of dyad-centered families will necessarily have functions of the family replaced by the soul-less state, which feeds itself and grows like a leviathan. That form, has killed more humans, and crushed more spirits, than any form of "oppressive patriarchy", and will do so in greater numbers as the population grows and technology allows for leveraged control of individuals.

Without gender norms, "if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever".

What does this have to do with nail polish?

Does the nail polish itself weaken your muscles? If so, I need to stop.

Well I never wear nail polish and my muscles are weak. Explain that, PP.

Anonymous wrote:About as concerning as girls wearing pants.

Perfect answer.