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As some of you know, I am a makeup artist in a holistic beauty boutique in a very wealthy area of eastern New York. The week before Halloween I was offering simple costume makeup designs for both adults and children. So my last client of the evening was a 15 year old girl who came in to get her makeup done for the Halloween dance at her school. I was enjoying a conversation with both the girl and her mother when suddenly the topic of transgender came up. I got a little nervous because I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut when I hear people speaking negatively about these sorts of topics and as I mentioned, my store is in a very upscale, white, conservative area…

Anyway, the girl starts telling us that her friend prefers to be a boy now. She says it very simply and comfortably and it made me happy to see her talk about it as if it was really no big deal.

Her mother says

“How does she even know what transgender is though? She’s a little young to be making a decision like that. I really think the media is taking things too far with all this gay stuff. I’m not against it or anything, but didn’t you just tell me two boys in your class are dating too?”

The girl said that yes, two boys she knew were dating and another boy she knew was gay also. (And she also corrected the pronouns her mother used for her friend)

“I don’t mind that she knows that homosexuality is,” the mother said. “But I don’t think it should be taught at such a young age. Did you know it’s on Disney channel now?”

It took me a moment to respond, I just kept painting the girl’s face until I could figure out what I wanted to say.

“Well,” I said. “We tend to teach heterosexuality literally from the time a child is born. Most children’s books and movies are even centered around a romance of some kind like a Prince and a Princess for example. There’s rarely a children’s movie that comes out where the main male and female character don’t end up marrying each other in the end. If we don’t have a problem flooding our children’s minds with heterosexuality from the time they are able to sit up and watch a movie on their own, what is so wrong with showing them two boys or two girls being in love? We aren’t showing them sex. We aren’t showing them anything inappropriate. Since when is love inappropriate? If we show them love in all it’s forms (be it gay or straight) from an early age, they will see that it’s all perfectly normal and natural and maybe we can finally put homophobic the past…”

The woman considered this for a second and then said “I just feel like they see it and then they start to think that they might be too.”

“And maybe they are. But isn’t it better for them to know that it’s okay? They aren’t hurting anyone.”

Then the girl said. “No ones going around just thinking they are gay because they know what gay is, mom. I know what a chicken is, that doesn’t mean I’m going to wake up tomorrow and start clucking.”