Don’t you just love gossip-mongering headlines like this one? Trawling through the sites for some news this morning, I found that Angelina is on the cover of this month’s Vanity Fair. In her interview, she talks about her kids including the cutie pie Shiloh.

Jolie says that when she was growing up she was most like her daughter Shiloh: “Goofy and verbal, the early signs of a performer…. I used to get dressed up in costumes and jump around.

However, other publications have jumped on this statement about Shiloh.

She likes tracksuits, she likes [regular] suits. She likes to dress like a boy. She wants to be a boy. So we had to cut her hair. She likes to wear boys’ everything. She thinks she’s one of the brothers.”

Bad choice of phrase from Angie, as it confuses the great unwashed. Shiloh is a tomboy, as was I and many straight ladies out there. It doesn’t mean she wants to be a boy. Even if she does realise later that her gender is something to be assessed, it’s none of our business.

Commenters on the sites, though, are what made me write this.  Ok, we’re talking the Daily Mail here (or the Daily Fail as our webmaster likes to call it), but some of the comments are misinformed:

Yes the child does look more male in posture and expression as well as looks.
Odd how two of the most beautiful women Cher and Angelina have daughters who want to be male*. Perhaps when nature achieves its peak of female perfection it throws a wild card ?

- Xanthe, Cambs UK,

While others are just nasty:

Ugh Angie! You dressed the girl to look like boys thus nobody on your house would ever be prettier than you! I won’t be surprised if Zahara and Vivienne turn out to be ‘tomboy’ as well.

- Cindy L, Acle, Norfolk

The majority of them are grand, normal people just saying what we all think:

Lots of little girls are tomboys and prefer to wear boys clothes ( I know I did!), but it doesn’t mean that they want to be boys

- Una, Dublin

Why does the media think it’s not ok for a girl to dress like a tomboy? Are all girls supposed to like pink? Really?!

Also, if it’s this bad for a girl can you imagine what it would be like for a boy? If it were Pax or Maddox who were playing with dolls or dressing in pink. Can you imagine the press? They’d be camped out on the kids.

The whole thing has an over-riding sense of “don’t worry, she’ll be ok”. Which, by extension, means it’s not ok to be transgender. The concept that this could be the case seems to be verboten, “surely such a cute kid can’t be one of them”, or “she’ll grow out of it”. What if she doesn’t?

She seems to have two parents who are letting her be herself, and if that means being himself, here’s hoping he gets an easier time of it at home than he will in the media.

*Can I just point out that Cher’s daughter, Chastity, doesn’t want to be male. Cher’s son, Chaz, is male.

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