Raising a kid is not and has never been a one-size-fits-all gig, and social media has made this abundantly clear.
From T.I.'s viral remarks about affirming his daughter's virginity with a yearly trip to the doctor to Dwyane Wade's decision to unapologetically accept his son's sexuality, it seems like everybody has more than two cents to invest in the conversation and Alicia's latest parenting revelation was no different. In a two-minute long video, Alicia Keys effectively set the internet on fire with a fervent discussion about tolerance, gender fluidity, and ultimately, parenting.
Although we may all have different styles of parenting, there is one common goal: to protect our children at all costs, and the "Show Me Love" singer recently took to Instagram to reveal that her way of doing that is by allowing her son to unapologetically rock rainbow-painted nails. In the video, the singer shared how a trip to the nail salon with her 4-year-old, Genesis, turned into what she now feels was a valuable teaching moment. The 38-year-old songwriter explained:
"So he tells the lady that he wants rainbow colors on his nails, and she brings all of these colors, and she paints each nail a different color. And after she painted his nails, he looked at me, he said, 'Mommy, I don't want this on my nails.'"
Upon asking her son why he no longer wanted the multicolored paint on his fingernails, she was disheartened by his response:
"And I was like, 'Why? You were so sure. You were good.' And he was like, 'People are not going to like it.' Can you believe this? Four years old. He's 4! And he already understands the concept that someone's going to judge him because he chose rainbow colors on his nails."
The mother-of-two went on to explain her frustration with societal norms and expressed that it's her mission to confront them head-first. According to Alicia, we're doing ourselves and our children a disservice by muting our expression based on worldly stereotypes of what a man or a woman "should be".
"The way I see it, there is masculine and there are feminine energies inside of us all, period. It's really frustrating to me. I'm actually really, really frustrated about it. I ask myself, 'Why is that? Why can't we just express the different energies that are inside us?… We should be able to explore and express [our masculine and feminine energies] however we want to."
To Alicia, it's important to practice what she preaches, which means that she is intentional about honoring both the masculine and feminine energies within herself.
"Even for me, myself, I oftentimes express the masculine energy that's inside of me. And, all the time, if that happens, there are the judgments, and there's the stereotypes, and there are all the energies that come towards that. And for my boys, [it's] similar, if they want to express the feminine energy that's inside of them. There's all of these judgments, and all these rules, and stereotypes, and vibes."
What do you think? Was Alicia's encouragement and unconditional acceptance of her son's nails good parenting or would you handle it differently? Let us know in the comments!
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