Today’s post is about some things that are close to my heart. The freedom to choose the way we want to live, our right to make choices that are not conventional, and the reason one person’s choices can be radically different from another person’s. Sounds a bit much? I know when you hear the word ‘choice’, especially from a lawyer, you expect the discussion to move toward politics, religion, identity, etc. Well, that’s not the case today. The choices I’m going to talk about today are those which are very personal to an individual. But first, let me tell you about the incident that has triggered this post.

A few days ago, I entered the TV room in my house, just as my husband was starting an 18-min short film on Disney Hotstar called The Little Prince(ss) (trailer). The title of the film intrigued me because I thought it had something to do with the book ‘The Little Prince’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I sat down to watch it, and even though the film had nothing to do with the book, it left me with a lot to think about. The film is about Gabriel, a 4-year-old boy who loves ballet and all things pink. Why? He thinks pink things are pretty. From the start, you can see Gabriel is a sweet, cheerful boy, who is quick to make friends with Rob, a boy he sees sitting alone on the school bus. You can see that Gabriel’s parents are happy to indulge his love for ballet and pink things. It’s Rob’s father who resents the fact that his son is friendly with a boy who has seemingly effeminate traits. When he sees Rob make a pink tutu for one of Gabriel’s dolls, he gets mad and has a showdown with Gabriel’s parents. There is a moral in this short film and I’ll leave it to you to find it for yourself when you watch it.

What struck me the most, while watching this film, was the intensity of the anger that Rob’s father feels towards the pink-clad, ballet-loving Gabriel. So much anger that he isn’t able to recognise the joy that Gabriel’s friendship brings to Rob. His son’s happiness becomes less important than the need to protest against all the ways in which he thought Gabriel was abnormal. However, in his anger and prejudice, Rob’s father is robbed (pun not intended!) of one crucial insight. He is not able to see that behind the pink tutus and soft smiles is a sweet, polite boy who is a better friend to his son than any other boy in the school.

Isn’t something like that quite common though? Haven’t we all, at one time or another, been so blinded by our prejudices, that we have failed to recognize the actual person behind the outer veneer? It makes me wonder how is it we get so prejudiced. Maybe it’s out of fear. The fear of someone or something so different from who we are that they make no sense to us. We feel scared of people we don’t understand and therefore, we are quick to say they are abnormal. But they aren’t really abnormal, are they? Just different. If we cannot make sense of them, of their choices and their motivations, then surely the failure is ours, not theirs. They ought not to be called abnormal or be punished for being different, right? In an ideal world, this would be the case. In the world of my childhood, it definitely wasn’t.

Something like what happened in the film was quite common when I was growing up. In the past, I have shared experiences from my childhood, when on account of my very short hair I would often be mistaken for a boy. Everyone lovingly called me a tomboy in those days. Despite minor humiliations here and there (like the passport debacle), I don’t think I was ever taunted by anyone for looking like a boy or disadvantaged in any manner for being tomboyish. As far as I remember, my parents never asked me to behave in a more feminine manner. I have several girlfriends who tell similar stories. For a girl to be tomboyish when she was growing up was quite acceptable in those days. I believe it still is.

But do you remember that boy in your life who everyone thought was slightly effeminate? Probably because he didn’t like sports, or liked fashion, or preferred the company of girls. Well, I remember him. His friends would shout ‘sissy’ when they saw him, taunt him mercilessly, and thrash him to an inch of his life whenever they would get an opportunity. He probably heard the phrase “Be a man!” from more than one person in his family while he was growing up. This was the life of a young boy who dared to express a desire for anything deemed feminine. I am generalising here but I cannot think of even one boy I grew up with whose parents would have been supportive and understanding if they had seen their son acting in a ‘girlish’ (for the want of a better word!) manner. My parents might have been the same had they had a son. Who can say? This was the way things were. There was a clear demarcation between the sexes. The colour blue was for boys, pink was for girls, and our toys were segregated. Girls like me would occasionally stray across the demarcation and behave like tomboys. But, in those days, for a boy to want to wear pink or play with dolls and to not be made sorry for it? Impossible.

I have often wondered what living like that must have been like. To be made to feel uncomfortable in your own skin. As a child, I was always comfortable with myself, with my short hair, my boyish face and figure. I would wear shorts everywhere, so much so that my sister would joke that I’d end up wearing silk shorts to my wedding (that didn’t happen, by the way). I bristled a little whenever someone thought I was a boy, but it didn’t give me sleepless nights. However, imagine being told that you couldn’t wear the clothes of your choice or play with the toys you liked? That you could not behave in a certain way because that is not the way a boy is supposed to behave? Such a childhood couldn’t be a happy one, could it?

Even if I am generous and say that the years of my childhood belonged to a different era, when our understanding of our self, identity and expression was limited; I cannot be equally generous now. If you’re a parent today and have a son who wants to wear a tutu and learn ballet, then you must indulge his desires in the same way you would have had he wanted to learn football or basketball. You also have to protect him from the barbs and censure of the rest of your family, his friends and the society at large. On the other hand, if you’re a parent whose children are following the conventional route, then don’t be all smug and think your job is done. You still have to teach them to respect people who are different from them and not be prejudiced against those who make unconventional choices. The responsibility to raise well-adjusted, happy and respectful kids is immense, and it’s on today’s parents. Please don’t be like Rob’s father.

Before I end this post, let me add my two bits on how one can become less prejudiced.

Accept that every person has an indefeasible right to choose how they want to lead their life as long as they don’t harm anyone else. What this means is that I have the right to choose to not have children if that’s what I want. Gabriel has the right to choose to learn ballet and wear pink without being called abnormal. That Gabriel and I have chosen differently from what you would have chosen doesn’t make us wrong. It just makes us different.

Understand that not everyone finds happiness in the same things. You may think there is only one hetero-normative, conventional way of living a happy life. But that isn’t true. How do I know this? Because this way of living does not make me happy, just like it doesn’t make many other people happy. Why? Because we are different people, who have different dreams, motivations, likes and dislikes. The same things cannot bring us happiness. And if they don’t, aren’t we entitled, nay obliged, to adapt those things in a way that makes us happy? The sooner you understand that, the easier you’ll find it to understand people who are different from you.

After this long long, discussion, this is what I have concluded. Does choosing happiness over conventionality make a person abnormal? No. Crazy? Nah. Does being different from everyone else endanger society? Surely not. I mean, I have never known a fondness for ballet or pink clothes to have ever harmed anyone. Have you?

~P

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