OK, I really need to ask this. Is this like a normal thing in Japan? Dressing your children like that? I mean I've seen it in so many mangas, be it Shoujo, Josei, Yaoi, Seinen... genre doesn't really matter. There's either a flashback where you see a little cute girl and then later on we find out that it's a man now... or mom is showing pictures of her son to his friends and we find out that she just really wanted a girl and since he used to be so cute, she just dressed him as one.

Oh and I'm not judging or anything, it's just that well... I've seen it only in manga

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I've also seen siblings costantly lusting at each other, big breasted middle schoolers, ambiguous relationships between teachers and students, and a whole lot of cat girls. I think it's pretty safe to list this one as another feature of mangaland

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lol... ok then, that's what I needed to know, because sometimes there are things you want to list as a "manga only" feature, but later on you find out that it's real So I never know what should I believe


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Don´t educate yourself by reading children´s comic books without doing any form of fact checking fist of all as superhero books constantly tell me that toxic waste is good for you but i am not so sure about that...
You should though read up on the Herbivore men phenomenon. It has much more to do with the topic at hand that one might think at first but i obviously sit in the same boat as train93. (I am surprised he didn´t make a "casual rape" cliché joke but i am rotten to the core i guess.)

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Isn't this also a horror movie cliche?
Where the ghost/villain is messed up because when he was a kid his mother tried to make him a girl?

This is just from my experience. So this is totally just my opinion.

My mother's friends would make their sons wear dresses for fun. They didn't go out in public or anything. This happened when the boys were about 2-3 years old. My father used to dress me up as a boy whenever he had a chance, and found it entertaining. Honestly, it's like some things do happen, but it's not too common. Just like TeacherxStudent stuff and big-boobed 10 year olds. (both which I've seen!)

In xxxHolic one of the characters was dressed as a girl when he was a child. He described that it's traditional to dress sickly young boys as girls. I forget exactly why but supposedly it helps them become stronger as they grow older. Considering how the series is based so heavily on folklore and tradition, I don't think it's just made up. Though I'm sure many do it just to be cute.

Last edited by shea07 at 9:41 pm, Oct 3 2015

^ this


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but for me the eccentrrick's statement is common even at our place my mom loved to dress my bro as a girl when he was like 2 or 3 year old and just for taking a picture and that's it not like my mom wanted a girl or someone like Catlyn Jenner or something just for fun

From what I vaguely remember it's also a culture thing. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I remember reading how historically boys grew out their hair to look like a girl so that evil spirits wouldn't get them. More so if they were of higher rank and the first boy in the family.

That and it's just cute. I wouldn't force a child to wear clothes they didn't want to; but hey if my son wants to wear girl leggings who am I to say no? It seriously looked cute on him. X3

But seriously when you go to a store to buy clothes for a boy 75% or more of the store is girl stuff and most of the boy stuff is just so lacking in design. It's rather annoying when I want to buy my boys something nice and interesting but it's the same generic pattern over and over again where the girls stuff are all sorts of designs and such.

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I wish there were more girls in the world.

We're very lucky because we live in an area that is fantastic for children who don't conform. I can tell you my son's experience wearing dresses and pink and headbands to school, but it might be different in a different state or town.

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This is an old tradition and I don't think anyone does it anymore, unless they're from like a really traditional family. There's a saying in Japan that if your first child is a boy, they won't grow up to become healthy. (There's a higher rate of death in boys than girls, which is why this tradition came to be.) It's also said that up till 7 years old, all children are under god's possession. So to make sure boys grow up to become strong and I think so that the god doesn't take the child away, the parents will dress the boy in girl's clothes and make him look like a girl until the age of 7 when they leave the hands of god.
It's just used in a lot of manga because it's an interesting tradition even in Japan(since no one does it anymore) and I guess it's easy to use in a fictional story setting. It has nothing to do with mom's wanting to dress their sons like girls for fun. I'm sure some parents still do that, but that's not just a Japanese thing.

As a bit of history lesson here, Before WW2 It wasn't uncommon for boys and girls around the world to wear dress. Fashion goes in and out and unisex and sex based clothes also goes in and out.

And because I doubt people would believe me here's a source,
From the Smithsonian

There you'll find other random tidbits like,

I should have pointed out that Breeching was a thing up to the early 20th century.
Here is Franklin D. Roosevelt as a 2 year old:



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