My Son Wants Pink Ballet Shoes

My son, A, came home from school the other day and said he wanted the pink ballet shoes, not the black ones. I apologized and promised that when he grew out of these, we could get the pink ones. But my heart ached.

A is 4 and takes dance at his preschool. The dance classes used to be separated by boys and girls, but because of the pandemic his class is treated as a unit. This means that all of the extracurricular classes are separated by classroom, not gender or schedule preferences. And so the boys get to learn dance right next to the girls.

When we signed him up for the class in the fall, I asked the teacher if we needed to get him any special clothes or shoes. She told us we didn’t and that he could borrow some boys ballet and tap shoes that she had. From the pictures we got, I noticed that the girls in his class were all in leotards, skirts, tights, and pink ballet shoes, while my son and the other boys were dressed in their normal clothes and black ballet shoes. The boys (read: boys’ parents) had it easy. I felt a pang of guilt from the heteronormative privilege I was benefitting from that I didn’t need to frantically place an order on Amazon to get my kid the “right stuff” for his class. But the feeling passed and I moved on.

Fast forward to Spring semester. A told me in the car one day that he needed a white shirt for dance class. I was confused and tried questioning him to get more information, but alas, 4-year olds. Instead, I texted his teacher and she told me the boys in dance needed a white t-shirt, black sweatpants, and black ballet shoes. I emailed the dance teacher to confirm. Yes, indeed I would need to make one of those frantic Amazon purchases to make sure he had the right clothes before his next dance class. I didn’t think twice. I found the required items in A’s size and clicked “Complete Purchase.”

After his next dance class, I asked him if everything fit, especially his ballet shoes. He said they did, but then he got really sad. I asked him why he was sad and that’s when he said it. He wanted the pink ballet shoes, not the black ones. And I hadn’t asked. I had done what I was told by the dance teacher and didn’t think to question the completely arbitrary rule that boys wear black ballet shoes and girls wear pink ones. It’s not like these are kids who are slated to go to Juilliard, these are preschoolers learning the basics of moving to music. What difference would it make if my son wore pink ballet shoes? Probably none. But I didn’t ask.

Next year, A will be starting Kindergarten (cue the water works from his father and me). He will attend our neighborhood public school and while I’m so excited about how his world will open up, I am a little nervous, too. He is a little boy who would rather have pink ballet shoes than black ones. But I don’t know that he will feel that way forever. How long will it take him to absorb the heteronormative, gendered world around him? How will it shape and change him in ways I can’t even imagine now? I’ve already inadvertently played a part in reinforcing ridiculous gender boundaries in his life. It may have started with ballet shoes, but what comes next?