My Son Asked, “Do These Make Me Look Gay?” — Here’s How I Answered
We were in the shoe aisle at Target, the fluorescent lights humming overhead, when my eleven-year-old son held up a pair of bright turquoise high-tops. He turned them over, studied the sole, and then looked at me with the particular expression he reserves for moments of genuine social crisis.
“Do these make me look gay?” he asked.
It was such a straightforward question that, for a second, I almost answered it like a question about, say, whether the shoes were comfortable or whether turquoise clashed with the jeans he was wearing. But the word hung in the air between us, and I could feel the weight shift in the conversation. This wasn’t about footwear.
I set down the gray running shoe I’d been inspecting. “Why are you asking that?” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “What does ‘gay’ have to do with shoes?”
He shrugged, already a little embarrassed. “I don’t know. The color, I guess. Some kids say stuff.”
The thing is, I knew what he meant. I’d heard the jokes at his school. Most of the boys in his grade were using the word “gay” the way boys have used it for generations—as a catch-all for anything outside the narrow bounds of acceptable boy behavior. Bright colors, emotional sensitivity, enthusiasm for the wrong things—all of it got tagged. I’d spent my own childhood in the nineties hearing the same thing, and I’d assumed we’d made more progress by now. But there he was, eleven years old, standing in a Target, wondering if his taste in athletic footwear was going to mark him as other.
I took a breath and did what I’ve learned to do in these moments: I tried not to make it a big deal while also making it a big deal. I picked up the shoe and looked at it like I was genuinely considering it.
“They’re just shoes,” I said. “Turquoise is a good color. The question I want to ask is whether you’re worried about what other kids might say about you.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded.
It took me a while to get to a place where I could handle that moment well. The first time my older son asked me something similar, years ago, I froze. He was asking about a necklace a girl at school had given him—a simple braided cord with a bead. He wanted to know if wearing it would make him look “different.” I had panicked and told him that real friends don’t care about that, which was true but utterly unhelpful. He walked away from that conversation with his question unanswered, and I think what he actually heard was: I don’t want to talk about this either.
I’ve tried to do better since then. With the shoe conversation, I decided to stay in the aisle and actually have the conversation there. I didn’t wait until we got home, and I didn’t pretend I hadn’t heard him. The fact that we were in a public, ordinary place seemed to help. The fluorescent lighting and the shelves of socks made it feel less like a “big talk” and more like a practical problem to solve together.
“Here’s what I think,” I said. “Kids are going to say stuff no matter what you wear or don’t wear. That’s not really about the shoes. But there’s a difference between wearing something because you like it, and wearing something because you’re trying to manage what other people think. Which one are you doing?”
He thought about that. “I like them,” he said, a little uncertainly. “But I don’t want to be the only kid in school wearing them. What if people laugh?”
I could see his point. At eleven, being singled out in any way feels like a catastrophe. The social cost calculus is different at that age. I didn’t want to dismiss his concern, but I also didn’t want to feed it by treating the question as if he’d just asked something dangerous.
So I told him the truth as I understood it: “People might laugh,” I said. “Or they might not. But here’s what I notice: the kids who are comfortable being themselves usually find their crowd eventually. The kids who pretend to be something they’re not spend a lot of energy walking around feeling weird. It’s your call. If you’re not feeling confident about the shoes, we can look at some other ones. But I’m not going to help you pick shoes based on whether they make you look anything.”
He put the turquoise shoes down and picked up a plain black pair. I forced myself not to react. It was his decision, and giving him space to make it was part of the lesson. He walked toward the register with the black shoes, then stopped.
“Actually,” he said, “can I get those turquoise ones? I think I’ll wear them on weekends first.”
That was a good compromise, I thought. He’d found a way to test the waters without committing to a full week of potential comment. I said okay, and we bought the turquoise shoes.
A few things have helped me in these conversations since then. I’ve learned that when kids ask loaded questions like “Do these make me look gay?” they’re rarely asking about queer identity in the way adults think. They’re asking about social safety. They’re asking: Will this make me a target? So I try to answer the actual question first, briefly and honestly, before turning the conversation toward the social layer underneath. The less panic I show, the less they feel like they’ve touched something forbidden.
I also try to remember that these questions aren’t one-and-done. A few weeks later, we were driving home from school, and he mentioned that a group of kids had been using “gay” as a put-down in the lunch line—”that’s so gay,” “don’t be gay”—and he had stayed quiet. We had a short conversation about that too, where I explained that staying quiet is okay for now, but that eventually he might find himself wanting to say something. We practiced a simple response together: “Can you explain that joke? I don’t get it.” It’s a low-stakes way for a kid to signal that the comment didn’t pass unnoticed. He hasn’t used it yet, as far as I know, but he has it in his pocket.
The turquoise shoes have been worn to school now, and as far as I can tell, nobody said anything. He’s moved on to asking about things like backpacks and haircuts now. I’m not pretending this means he’s completely comfortable in his own skin—he’s eleven, and there will be new questions around every bend. But I’m learning to recognize that “do these make me look gay?” was never really about the shoes. It was about getting permission to exist in the world without having to explain yourself. That’s a question worth answering as many times as it takes.
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