Some parents do horrible things to their kids – acts of cruelty that are deserving of criticism and derision from others.
Giving a child a gender-bending hairstyle isn’t one of them. But if you checked out Rachel Zoe’s latest Instagram posts, you’d be forgiven for thinking that was the parenting equivalent of a war crime.
When the celebrity stylist posted this photo of her 2-year-old son Skylar, many commenters praised his gorgeous chin-length curls. Others were less forgiving of his haircut (well, lack thereof).
“Omfg are you nuts?! Cut your kids hair,” one follower insightfully remarked. “STOP MAKING YOUR BOY LOOK LIKE A GIRL,” cried another. On a previous photo of Skylar, one man went so far as to tell Zoe, “You’re a terrible mom. Do you know how hard youre f***ing him over?”
I must say, good on these users for airing their concerns about the length of this poor child’s hair – after all, it has such a profound impact on their day-to-day lives.
Oh, that’s right. It actually doesn’t. What a parent chooses to do with their kid’s hair affects that child – and nobody else, regardless of how masculine or feminine – or mullet-like – it is.
Rachel Zoe isn’t the first celebrity mum to feel the wrath of strangers for how she styles her son. Angelina Jolie has racked up her fair share of ‘bad mum’ points for allowing her daughter Shiloh to dress and act like a boy – even though that’s precisely what Shiloh wants to do.
In 2012, Star magazine proclaimed Shiloh had “no boundaries”, an obsession with collecting dead spiders and a penchant for violence, viewing her bloodied knees as a “medal of honour”. Well, that’s it – Shiloh’s life can only go downhill from here. The magazine even consulted a child psychologist, who prescribed that “only having boy haircuts” was indicative of a gender-identity problem.
