Last week there was a lot of hoopla on Fox, CNN and ABC over an email advertisement for J. Crew featuring the designer, Jenna Lyons, and her child, Beckett. Did the ad contain blatant sexual tones, abuse or anything bad enough to have news anchors voicing their opinion in concern? Hardly. This cute advertisement showed a mom bonding with her 5-year-old son, who just happened to have pink nail polish on his toes.

The boy wanted them done, and wanted the color, so what is the big deal?

People are outraged at this advertisement, saying that it’s not right for a mom to paint the boy’s toes, and especially not to paint them neon pink. Some critics took it a step further saying this could lead the child to gender confusion, and maybe even cause him to become transgendered. Right, because it’s a well-known fact that toenail polish will cause a child to become transgendered. Not.

If you think that we, as a society, are free to be ourselves, the talk about these pink piggies should make you think otherwise. People still think it is not right for boys to express themselves in ways that aren’t masculine. While there has been some serious progress in gender roles for men and women, we still are crammed into boxes, and people are made fun of whenever they attempt to break out.

“Not only is Beckett likely to change his favorite color as early as tomorrow, Jenna’s indulgence, or encouragement, could make life hard for the boy in the future,” Media Research Center’s Erin Brown said to Fox News.

Why will it be hard in the future? Will it because he will be gender-confused over painting his toenails, or will it be because people are still unaccepting of men doing “girly” things? Will he be afraid because people will call him gay for these so-called feminine actions? I think that would hurt the boy more than the act of polishing his nails.

Dr. Keith Ablow wrote for Fox News, “This is a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity – homogenizing males and females when the outcome of such ‘psychological sterilization’ [my word choice] is not known.”

Why should girls act like girls and boys act like boys? Why not let children explore different aspects and let them be kids?

What’s wrong with girls being rough and tumble or boys being soft and nurturing? Won’t that help them grow up to be better, more well-rounded people? I’m not a psychologist, but I have learned from Gender Journeys, a discussion led by Brad Freihoefer at LGBT Student Services and from women’s studies classes that gender is fluid. Some days we are more masculine, and others we are more feminine in the ways we dress and act.

Gender is not necessarily stuck in stone. What’s wrong with abandoning what is acceptable for women and men?

As Dr. Susan Bartell said on the CBS Early Show, “[Our kids’] gender is going to emerge naturally as part of who they are and has nothing to do with whether we put pink nail polish on them.”

Many people disagree with Bartell, including Brown, who called the advertisement “blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children.”

The comments about this boy turning transgendered over nail polish not only show the lack of education on the subject of transgendered people, but almost a hatred of the idea of transgender.

Transgendered people already face an obscene amount of bullying because they don’t fit what the doctor said their sex was. Eighty-five percent of transgendered students reported being verbally harassed in the past school year because of their sexual orientation and gender and/or gender expression, according to the 2007 National School Climate Survey. Within that survey, 49.5 percent of transgender students also reported physical harassment.

These reports on pink toes just fuel the fire that transgender is wrong and that if we impose strict gender rules, transgendered people will just go away. This will only make lives harder for people who don’t fit gender norms.

Transgender doesn’t happen overnight, because some parent treats a boy like a girl. I painted my brother’s toes from time to time as a kid, and he identifies as a man. Transgender isn’t a snap decision; it is something that will affect that person forever. Painting nails once doesn’t make it happen.

Why should we criticize anyone who doesn’t fit stupid stereotypes that someone made up? There is nothing wrong with a boy wearing nail polish or a girl playing football, and we need more people like Lyons to break these norms not by forcing her child, but by letting her kid be a kid.

Jenna Lyons just painted her son’s toenails — something that will come off. She didn’t force him to do anything he didn’t want to do. She was letting her son be a kid and explore, so what is the big deal?