My Son Wanted the Pink Ballet Shoes

(Image description: four pairs of dance shoes are lined up on stone steps. Three pairs are black and one is pink.)

“I wanted the pink ones, not the black ones,” my four-year-old son, A, said when we drove home from school the other day.

“I’m so sorry,” I said and looked at his forlorn face in my rear-view mirror. “I should’ve asked. I promise when you grow out of these, we’ll get the pink ones.”

But my heart ached.

A was 4 and took dance at his preschool. The dance classes used to be separated by boys and girls, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic, his class was treated as a unit. This meant that all of the extracurricular classes were separated by classroom, not gender or schedule preferences. And so the boys got to learn dance right next to the girls.

When we signed him up for the class in the fall, I had 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.

As the semester progressed, I could see from the pictures the teacher sent us 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.

When I first realized this, I felt a pang of guilt from the heteronormative privilege I was benefitting from that meant I didn’t need to frantically place an order on Amazon or else do an special load of laundry to ensure my kid’s extra outfit was ready and packed for school on dance class days. But the feeling passed, and I moved on.

Fast forward to the spring semester.

“I need a white shirt for dance class,” A said when I picked him up from school one day.

“What do you mean?” I asked. This did not comport with what I had been told by his dance teacher.

“I said, I NEED A WHITE SHIRT FOR DANCE,” A shouted, overenunciating every word.

I tried questioning him to get more information, but alas, 4-year-olds. Instead, I texted his preschool teacher and she told me the boys in dance needed a white t-shirt, black sweatpants, and black ballet shoes. I then emailed the dance teacher to confirm. Yes, indeed I would need to make one of those last-minute 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 A’s 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 start 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’s 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, how could I protect him from the outside world when I couldn’t even protect him from myself? It may have started with ballet shoes, but what would come next?