Girls are perfectly fine paying with tanks and trucks, and little boys are allowed to show emotion and grow their hair out.
MUm Abigail Goulding is tired of receiving parenting advice she didn’t ask for and doesn’t want to hear, and like all unsolicited parenting advice, it concerns the way with which she raises her child.
Particularly her son’s long, flowing blond hair that reaches down his back.
A hairdresser herself, Abigail says that her son Winter’s hair was the kind people pay loads of money to achieve.
“I know because do it at work everyday,” she says in a Mama Mia story. Light blonde on the end blended up to a dark blonde on the roots. He’s got a natural balayage and it’s so natural and it’s so beautiful it’s so perfect so why cut it? It’s so nice.”
Photo credit: Mama Mia
Despite being a hairdresser, she doesn’t cut her son’s hair except for the fringes. For this reason, unbidden advice regarding his son’s mane always finds her.
Every day, the Sydney mother says, someone will say “you should cut his hair.” But Abigail has gotten past the point of caring.
People will always find a way to criticise someone.
“People always say why you doing this or that—he’s a little boy and he may grow up and get a job where he has to look a particular way for work, so while he is young and he can look how he wants and he can be a bit free then, why not?”
By keeping Winter’s hair long, Abigail helps him understand that there’s variety in life, that there’s isn’t just one way things are and should be done.
She even makes it a point to point out all the “cool” long-haired men on the street as well as short haired women, as well as the superhero Thor to expand his son’s horizons.
Winter is just like most four-year-old boys; he likes trucks and trains and Legos. He dresses up in batman and superman costumes. He is also extremely adventurous and outgoing.
Yet he is often mistaken as a girl.
“All the time people just assume he’s a girl,” his mother says. “Then he gets annoyed and says: ‘I’m a boy. I’m a boy.’ He stands up for himself, I don’t have to say anything.”
But some people could be downright nasty with their comments. In fact, one mother even said that Winter may end up having gender issues later in life because of his hair.
Photo credit: Mama Mia
“Someone said to me at a kid’s party: ‘He’s going to grow up to be trans because his hair’s long’. I said: ‘No one’s ever influenced to be trans, they either want to do it or they don’t…”
Abigail doesn’t believe that hair length is indicative of one’s gender, and she tries to teach her son that.
That’s another reason why gender stereotyping is a particularly problematic way of thinking; children shouldn’t be restricted from enjoying certain things simply because society dictates that it is exclusive to one sex.
Girls are perfectly fine paying with tanks and trucks, and little boys are allowed to show emotion and grow their hair out.
Meanwhile, Abigail has no plans to cut his son’s hair despite the almost-daily harassment they’re experiencing.
“I have absolutely no desire to cut it,” she says. “I’ll let it touch the floor. It’s just so nice.”
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