When Femininity Isn't Enough

By Dr. Paul Dobransky, WomensHappiness.com, Founder
Sometimes, our instincts are not enough to guide our decisions in this world. This goes for men and women. We need to take into account the community, and also the instincts and perspectives of the opposite gender.
Take, for example, the recent controversy surrounding the President and Creative Director of J. Crew, Jenna Lyons.
This mother and titan of business (she has been mentioned as a potential CEO for this powerful clothing brand) featured her young son in photographic company promotional materials - ostensibly to show that her family uses J Crew clothing, and that she is accessible and down-to-earth. We do not doubt that she, like all good mothers, loves her child.
Yet there's something in the photo that bothers me.
Why?
She is painting her five-year-old son's toenails hot pink.
Many women have written us about this and said things like, "Come on. Relax. It's just a touching moment between mother and son."
My own executive assistant even chimed in to that effect, having a young son herself, and having indulged in the same activity. Yet in her case - she is a woman with great savvy about men's thinking, identity, and behavior - one would not be worried about the future outcome for her PARTICULAR son.
The same is possibly true of the J. Crew President and her son, but that is not the point. In individual exceptional cases, potentially damaging behavior can work out okay in the end. But the photo is not an exemplary example for millions of parents on the receiving end of the advertising message.
A recommendation for healthy growth and development for half of humanity - men - ought not be derived from one charming moment between mother and son. The photo is broadcasting that it's normal and okay to do this, when it really is not. And the issue is not limited to feeling comfortable in one's relation to a mother, to creative expression, or to the tolerance of varying gender identities in others. The biggest problem with the photo has received very little attention in the media: bullying.

Bullying is the problem

One big, bold, blatant worry a typical male and father might see in the photo is that of bullying. The photo is an announcement of open season on one's son for the schoolyard jerks and others, including hurtful comments from female classmates, which are no less devastating to the developing male psyche.
Bullying is perpetrated more frequently perpetrated in emotional violence - and by girls too - than by physical violence. See the ground-breaking research on emotional bullying surrounding the Columbine tragedy by Dr. Robert Galatzer-Levy of the University of Chicago.
Bullying is more than physical. Hurtful words - coming from the mouths of girls as well as boys - delivers a blow to the young psyche that is no different than a punch to the face. I know this on a personal level, too. I was the object of relentless emotional bullying all through grade school. Few people ever knew - not teachers, not my parents, and not even my brothers.
Why? Because a boy's masculine instinct discourages him from complaining to others or seeking help for mere "emotional bullying." Boy and man alike will "suck it up" and absorb the psychic damage. We do not wish to appear weak to other boys or men. It makes sense that we have this instinct. In earlier times, appearing weak to other men in the tribe, to women, and to those outside of the tribe would mean certain harm or death.
A boy knowing that he let himself down and couldn't defend himself will find it hard to look in the mirror.
One typical retort you may hear if you disagreed with the ad of mother and son is this: "Well, have you ever been a mother?"
The answer is no. I have never been a mother, don't want to be a mother. In this case, I don't care about the issues surrounding the welfare and satisfaction of mothers. That's for another time and place. Instead, I am reacting as an expert on behavior and also as a man who was a boy. As a boy, I was bullied. This controversy is about the welfare of the boy, not the mother.
One of the other thing that I hear is that "our culture has messed with your head and taught you that boys shouldn't wear pink. Let them wear pink."  But a helpless boy - with no voice and no choice - who is thrust into a major corporation's ad campaign is more likely to be bullied. No matter what his "gender identity," he still masculine instinct. One's sense of what feels masculine or feminine doesn't get determined by culture. It's encoded in our biology and subject to the natural forces of human evolution. The boy very well could be bullied as a result of the ad, and his mother might be very well be oblivious to the bullying and its effects on his developing psyche.
Try this: the way I feel emotionally when I hear about the toenail-painted boy would be similar to how many women might feel if they heard of the male CEO of a motorcycle manufacturer - tossing his young daughter onto the back of a chopper, no seat-belts, telling her to hold on, and revving the tires to a squeal as they take off down a gravel road.
How would that feel to many women to hear of? Would they be concerned for the girl's safety? Would they suspect the father of using his daughter only for the benefit of his company, or further - to simply aggrandize himself, showing how cool he is?  Would they wonder why the mother does not stop him and say, "Hey, you will NOT do that with my daughter! Not in THIS household! Get her off that bike or we're getting a divorce. I'm calling the police!"
You bet.
The same emotions are at work. The same alarm bells ring that something is wrong there. Yet, with J. Crew mother and son, we don't ask where the father is. We don't ask what he would say, or why.  Men are not allowed to complain or resist against the juggernaut of the cool, corporate mom. While the debate about whether toenails should be painted pink or blue or not painted at all rages on, it is important to wonder whether there is a missing voice in the conversation.
It's voice of the mature masculine man.