It's just a normal advertisement for J.Crew, and there seems to be nothing wrong... except for the bright pink nail polish on the young boy's toes. The verdict has always been blue is for boys and pink is for girls, but this ad has a pink color painted on a male child. Some people take this as simply an ad that expresses the mother's love for the child, but others don't take this ad very lightly. Conservative columnists believe this is a form of celebration of "propaganda pushing the celebration of gender-confused boys wanting to dress and act like girls is a growing trend, seeping into mainstream culture." If I were asked about this ad, I would say it conveys nothing more than a cute child enjoying his time with his mother who is having a little fun with toenail polish, but I would personally never be caught dead wearing pink toenail polish. This is an advertisement that confuses some about gender identity, and it goes back to the problem of the re-defining gender, which is never a simple task. Yes, it is odd in society for a male to be wearing pink, but can we really judge our gender identity with the paint on our body? Gender can be juggled in the social norms of culture and ideals, but in the end, we can't judge our gender identities based on a color. In the most objective viewpoint, pink is only an idea, a figment of our imagination, a memory. Colors are based off the frequency of light that is reflected, and yet something so intangible as pink, is conceived as feminine or girly. The only reason why we believe it is girly is because that's what we're told to believe. Society can change the expectations we must meet in order to fulfill a gender identity, but it can't define nor limit our gender identities.
-Fred Kim
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