Lady Gaga woke me up at 6.24am this morning.
She stormed into my room, platinum hair waving, four-inch glitter platforms thudding, high-pitched voice proclaiming that "the show was about to begin NOW"; we must all go downstairs IMMEDIATELY or we'll miss it.
She can be a serious diva, that Gaga. She demands a full house for every single one of her thrice-daily performances; she insists on at least five costume changes per show; she has a wardrobe bursting with bling; she never wears fewer than six spangling earrings and eight diamanté necklaces at a time. She also has an insatiable desire for ice-cream, a violent dislike of spinach, a hatred of bedtime and requires at least two stories before going to sleep at night.
She also only exists in our house. Her personality is so large that she longs to venture out into the wilds of Hackney and proclaim her Diva-dom to the world. But even Gaga isn't impervious to the one thing that strikes fear into the strongest of Diva's hearts - the judgement of her public.
Our Gaga knows that she's expected to look and act a different way: she 'shouldn't' be wearing her new eye-shadow; she 'shouldn't' be perfecting her hip wiggle dance move. Instead, she 'should' be wearing trousers; she 'should' be playing football; she should not, in fact, be calling herself a 'she' at all. Even at just five-years-old, this splendid specimen of all things sparkly is expected to hide her light under a gender stereotype.
And I've battled with this conflict myself, too. All any parent wants for their child is an easy life (in the best sense of the word) and for them to be safe and happy. We had a conviction that we'd never force our boy to be anything other than who he wanted to be, yet, when this conviction was tested, we found ourselves trying to resist fuelling his 'girly' requests. If he wanted to buy a princess magazine so he could add the attached pink lipstick to his collection, we'd try to steer him towards Spiderman or pirates. I even suggested to his best friend's mum that maybe they could buy our boy a football for his fifth birthday, because it might encourage him to play the sport. I found myself battling with prejudices I didn't even know I had.
His dad and I eventually decided that it was best that he didn't wear his 'girl's stuff' outside the house. We'd seen how it hurt our boy when his friends laughed as Gaga made her grand entrance at home - how would strangers react on the street? Instead, we explained again and again that different people like different things and tried to build up his glimmering armour.
When it became clear that our boy's passion for tutus, high heels and dresses wasn't just a brief phase, we agreed that he could wear some stuff outside the house - hair-clips, jewellery, and the more practical accessories - but by that point, he'd already decided that he didn't want to. He'd received too many questioning stares from his reception classmates when he'd tried to dress up in the princess costumes at break-time, or wear the paper flowers in his hair at craft-time.
A year on, our diva is stronger than ever. We've learnt to fully embrace and be proud of our boy's inner and outer Gaga. Her full glory may still just exist inside our house (our boy's choice, not ours), but her influence extends way beyond that. Put simply, she makes our bejewelled boy happy - and he can kick some serious arse on any dancefloor. He invites his trusted friends to Gaga's exclusive shows and has even accepted a couple of them as 'backing dancers'. Superhero toys are now stowed in our daughter's room (she's two and her favourite word is 'Batman'), replaced by many, grin-inducing Barbies.
I recently read something interesting: when Barbie was first released in 1959, guess who begged to be bought this gloriously shimmery vision in pink? Boys. Way more boys than girls. So, G.I. Joe was born. The boys still wanted Barbies, but they were bought the Macho Man instead. I wonder how many other young boys are struggling with what they 'should' be doing, wearing or being. As parents, all we can do is support them - and try and make life easier for these courageous non-conformists by helping them to choose for themselves.