Disneyland greeter

My friends then four year old boy begged for an Elsa dress when he first saw Frozen. He loved it and nearly wore the thing out. A few years later I don't think he's said he is a girl .

Men can wear whatever they want. Never mind the fact these dresses are costumes anyway, on men or women. I'm very happy for my son to see that men are perfectly entitled to play this same dress-up, and for my daughters to see that wearing frilly dresses is in no way synonymous with being a woman.

I am, however, horrified by the pushy script, and the idea that there are parents who take their young children in this store to "pick out some pieces" at $250 a pop!

Because many men cross dress as a sexual kink, and kinks/paraphelias tend to cluster ie- a person with a kink normally doesn’t have just one kink, it’s more likely they will have many and this takes up a big part of their life/headspace, I don’t think we can really call a sexually mature adult man wearing a dress just ‘a man in a dress’ in the way you can say ‘a boy in a dress’ or ‘a woman in a dress’. If there is a sexual component to the crossdressing, then this is not appropriate attire for greeting children.

If the man was asked to wear a dress by his employer, it wouldn’t be an issue, if it was his idea, I think they shouldn’t agree to it.

@BaronMunchausen, @CovetedAsFuck I totally agree.

Just to loop back to one of my earlier comments, I would add that I would have no problem if Nick was a Nicola/trans woman as long as Nick was fully aware that Nick is a man. To be a man and a transwoman is not an issue. I'll happily use she/her to show a respect for someone's gender identity but that doesn't mean I believe it myself. I call our local vicar Reverend [insert first name here], never just her name, but that doesn't mean I revere her or God. I'm an atheist.

Exactly this, the two things are becoming conflated in a really disappointing/dangerous way.

And then that leads to a kind of logical backflip in which people who disagree with gender ideology are wrongly characterised as also being against gender non-conformity. I find it infuriating.

I agree gender non-conformity good, equating it with gender "transition" bad.

The person tweeting appears to disapprove of both.

It's true to say though that in cultures where gender ideology rules, gender stereotyping has won and traditional female dress has become part of the semiotics of male to female "transition". It's often what is meant by "living as a woman".

I skimmed @Gatehouse77 's post too fast and read "buck conformity" as "tuck comfortably"...

That minor surprise aside, hard agree with everyone saying a man happy to be a man in a dress and happy to share Disney Princessing style with children of both sexes is a good thing.

My boys loved the Disney princesses and dressing up when they were little.
If this guy empowers boys to go in & look at/ try on/ buy the pretty dresses, good for him.

Honestly, I do struggle with men in feminine clothing ATM because I now associate it with hostility & misogyny but that's my own prejudice to sort out.

Nick's not claiming to be a woman.
He can wear what he likes.

We should be expanding the definition of acceptable clothing and styles for men. Men absolutely can wear dresses. As long as there is no claim that dress equates to woman, there is no issue.

Or Call the Midwife.

Give him a red cardigan, and he'd look like an extra from Call the Midwife. All those kids aren't really going into a princess boutique, they are going to get a TB injection.

Honestly.

I am afraid I am going to have to disagree here.

As a costume, this is terrible. The dress doesn't fit. It's too short for him. He's stuffed the pockets full of items that then pull the fabric across the hips. And the socks and shoes are just horrific. If I was paying that kind of money, I'd think Disney were taking the absolute piss.

If they want males to work in this attraction, then they are going to need to come up with better clothing than this. Take the back veil away, and you've got massive 1940s ammunitions factory vibes. How is that magical?

He can call himself whatever name he likes. It’s got fuck all to do with you.

Of course he can but if he chooses a woman’s name and thinks that makes him a woman, then it is my business.

Depends whether he was also identifying as Italian I guess.

I think it’s great, it’s saying boys and men can wear what are traditionally seen as feminine clothes. If this were more normalised then perhaps so many males would not think they were in the wrong body just because they like pink

I have no problem with men in dresses / skirts. Men in dresses / skirts are great. Beckham in a sarong, for example. Plenty of cultures have men who wear what in this country would pass for a dress anyway. Scottish men look mighty fine in their kilts.

I have a huge problem with men in dresses who tell my kids they're bigots for noticing that they're men in dresses and trying to force tiny children (and their parents) collude in the lie that they're women.

There's a world of difference. It doesn't look like this bloke was pretending to be a woman so no problem at all.

I think the man looks really happy and excited at being a fairy godmother apprentice. Good for him and nice way for some gender stereotype to be bashed to smithereens.

I hope he’s a really nice man, who’s good at his job and that parents who might be concerned about their sons who like dressing up might be persuaded that it’s perfectly okay.

It's such a shame in today's world that something as simple as Nick in a dress isn't simple at all

it is,

when i was a dinner lady there was a little 4 year old who was too shy to ask anyone to play. I asked a friendly child if he would play with ‘ben’, ben said lets play i’m trapped in a tower and you rescue me….friendly child said ‘awesome, I’ll be batman’ and ben said ‘I’ll be Belle’

i did chat to him about his siblings (he had a brother) and if he liked dressup (he did, his favourite dress was obviously Belles 😀)

This doesn't bother me. There are also men dressed as giant mice and other animals. It's just a costume in this instance

I don't see a problem with it either.

Though 2 observation. The backlash in America is really ramping up, how far and how hard the pendulum will swing is a worry. And second how fucking expensive are those Disney dresses.

As I typed that, I was thinking of something I saw from Mr Menno where he said he wished there were more role models out there telling boys and men that there is no set way to be a boy or a man.

Without role models to show that it's perfectly normal to play around with different ways of dressing etc, there will be more boys who start to believe that they are probably girls. The awful comments on the Twitter thread won't help with this either.

Some boys who like dresses will grow up to be straight, some to be gay. Either way, having the space to explore without adults imposing their own interpretations is so important.

I'm rooting for Nick to be vocal about this now 🤞🤞🤞 However, the caveats above still stand. It's such a shame in today's world that something as simple as Nick in a dress isn't simple at all.

(As an aside, I'm also waiting to be called out on this thread for my "naivety" on what it means when a man "cross dresses".... Autogynophilia is very real - and would be a total game changer - but it shouldn't be a go to assumption just because there is a man in a dress who is promoting the sale of dresses)

As long as he doesn’t identify as a woman, I don’t see a problem. I think it’s rather a good thing for little boys who like dressing up to have it normalised in this way.

He can call himself whatever name he likes. It’s got fuck all to do with you.

I too don't really see a problem with this. If he said his name was Nicola then I would.

You have posted this is discussion but not actually discussed? What are your thoughts OP?