What To Do When Your Son Worries He’ll Get Bullied For Wearing Eyeliner: A Teacher’s Perspective
The bell for 7th period dismissal was five minutes out when Leo hung back by my desk, crumpling a half-done sketch of a guitar into his hoodie pocket. He’s the quiet kid who draws band logos on his notebook and never raises his hand unless we’re talking about 80s post-punk, so I knew something was off before he spoke. He tugged his hood farther over his forehead, glanced over his shoulder to make sure the last kids clearing out of the room were gone, and mumbled the question I’ve been thinking about ever since: “Will I get bullied for looking like this? Does the eyeliner make me look like a girl?”
I could smell stale microwave popcorn from the staff lounge meeting I’d had that morning, and the smartboard in the front of the room was still glowing with the wrong answer someone had written for the exit ticket. I leaned back against my desk instead of leaning in, didn’t make a big deal out of it, because that’s what 12 year olds hate most. I asked him to pull his hood down so I could see. The line was thicker than he’d probably meant it to be, smudged a little at the corner from where he’d been rubbing it all class. It looked exactly like what it was: a kid trying something new that made him feel like himself.
He told me a boy in homeroom had leaned over on the way to morning announcements and said “nice makeup, girl” under his breath, and that’s when the knot in his stomach had shown up. He’d practiced putting it on for a week in front of his mirror at home, he said, for his garage band’s first practice next month. He just wanted to test how it looked at school before the show.
A lot of adults would jump one of two ways here. Either you rush off to find the homeroom kid and yell at him for being rude, or you pat Leo on the shoulder and say “there’s nothing to worry about, you look great, don’t care what people think.” I’ve done both those things early in my career, and neither works. Telling a kid they have nothing to fear when their stomach is in knots just makes them think you don’t get it. Rushing in to fix every bad comment takes away their chance to tell you what they actually need.
Instead, I grabbed a pack of makeup wipes from the drawer under my desk (I keep them there for face paint after spirit week and when kids get chocolate ice cream on their cheeks at lunch) and pushed them across the desk. I said, “That’s such a scary question to have to ask, isn’t it? I’d be nervous too if I thought people would be mean to me just for how I look. We can do whatever you want here. If you want to wipe it off right now and no one has to know you wore it, that’s totally fine. If you want to keep it on, I’ll walk you to lunch and keep an eye out between classes all afternoon, and anyone says anything I’ll handle it immediately. If you want to fix it a little before you go, I can help with that too.”
That’s the first concrete thing I tell parents now when they ask me about this kind of thing: always lead with options, not opinions. Give your kid the choice, because this is their experience, not your photo op for “raising a confident kid.” I’ve had parents tell me they forced their kid to keep the makeup on to “teach bullies a lesson” and that’s just putting your own values on your kid’s back when they’re already scared. It’s okay if they don’t want to be a trailblazer at 12. It’s okay if they want to try it again another day when they feel braver.
Leo thought for a minute, then pushed the wipe back. He said he wanted to keep it, but maybe fix the smudge. I helped him soften the edge a little, and then I walked him to the cafeteria like I said. I stopped by his table halfway through lunch to drop off the extra chocolate chip cookie I’d gotten from the vending machine, just to send a quiet signal that I was there if he needed me. By the end of the day, two of his friends had asked where he bought the eyeliner, one said it looked “sick” matching his black hair, and the boy from homeroom didn’t say another word.
The second thing I tell parents is don’t skip over the part where he asks if it makes him look like a girl. A lot of people jump in to say “no, you don’t look like a girl, don’t worry” which accidentally sends the message that looking like a girl is a bad thing. You don’t have to give a big lecture on gender stereotypes right there in the moment, but you can say something small, like “looking like whatever you want is fine, no matter what anyone says” instead of rushing to distance him from being seen as feminine. It plants a seed without putting pressure on him.
The third thing is be specific about your backup plan. Don’t just say “I’ll support you.” Tell your kid: “If anyone says anything at school, I’ll email the principal today, and we can figure out next steps together. If you want me to pick you up early any time, just text me and I’ll be there in 10 minutes no questions asked. If you want to practice wearing it around the house for a few more weeks before you take it to school, that’s what we’ll do.” Kids don’t need vague support, they need to know exactly what safety looks like when they’re trying something new.
It’s been a month since that day by my desk. Leo wears eyeliner to school two or three days a week, sometimes he doesn’t. He got a spot in the school talent show with his band next month, and he’s already planning his look for that. He still gets a dumb comment once a week from someone in the hallway, but now he just rolls his eyes and keeps going. I still keep an extra tube of black pencil eyeliner in my desk drawer, he asked me to keep it there for days he forgets it at home.
There’s no big grand ending here. We didn’t fix bullying, we didn’t change the whole school’s mind about boys wearing makeup. We just gave a 12 year old the space to figure out what he wanted, and let him know we had his back no matter what he chose. That’s enough, most days.
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