When I was in grade seven, I was in a seven and eight split and every year we had a Halloween parade, where all the students from kindergarten to grade eight would walk around the school’s gymnasium and all of our parents would come and watch as we proudly showed off our costumes. After the parade people in grades six, seven and eight went to a school dance.
There was this boy in my split class and he was in grade eight, he wore a fairy costume, he looked very similar to Peter Pan but instead of a green shirt and a brown hat, he wore a white shirt and wings with magic wand, no one really batted an eye at his costume in our class we thought he was being very funny, because he was the class clown. This boy wore this costume all the way until after lunch when we walk into the gymnasium, ready to show off our costumes to our parents and the other students. The principal walks right up to this boy and takes him away, we continue with the parade and he never comes back. after the parade is over we walk back to our classroom while the teachers prepare for our dance, in the classroom is that boy wearing his phys-ed clothes sitting at his desk. Our teacher asks what happened and he told us that he got in trouble for his costume because it was rude to the other students who were dressed up as fairy’s because the rest of them were girls, so his punishment was to stay in the classroom for the rest of the day and miss the parade and even the dance while he writes 300 lines saying “I will not dress like a girl”. This came to a surprise to all of us because this boy had never been in trouble before he was a kid who would finish his work early and walk around and help us grade sevens.
This showed us that back then our school had very little tolerance to things that came with sexuality because in grade 10 that boy came out as bi-sexual and he was never made fun of or treated differently for that reason. The only time he was treated differently was by our principle when he was in grade eight.
JordanLys 
Jordan,
I enjoyed reading your blog post as it was very eye-opening and interesting to me because I have never witnessed an event such like this.
Immediately when I began reading your post, I was taken back to my memories of Halloween. I think it’s such a fun holiday for young kids that allows them to express themselves and dress up however they want to. It is a day of freedom for children, so to speak, because they get to pick out costumes they love and celebrate the day. When you explain how all the students would “proudly show off [their] costumes” for all the parents in the gymnasium, I could easily picture the event and all the happiness that the students and parents would have felt.
I like how you then contrasted that happy moment to the experience of the boy that was confronted by the principal and told he could not wear his costume because “it was for girls”. I was shocked to read about what the principal did to this student; not only was I shocked the principal made him take off his costume, but also that he made him write 300 lines of “I will not dress like a girl”. I’m surprised that an act like this was even allowed in a school and that there were not any consequences for the principal for having treated this student so unfairly. This led me to question—did any of the parents learn about this incident and was anything done about it? Also, did the teacher do anything in the situation?
I think it is interesting how the students did not think anything differently of the student for wearing a “girl costume”, but rather it was an adult that acted indifferently to him and was bothered by the situation. Perhaps this shows a difference in generational beliefs. I also think something can be said about double standards with your story. Do you think that a girl dressed up in a masculine costume would have been asked to change out of her costume? For example, if a girl wore a Peter Pan fairy costume.
I think your blog post offers a lot of insight into the standards set around gender in society today, but also how these standards are shifting as evidenced by your final comment, “[…] in grade 10 that boy came out as bi-sexual and he was never made fun of or treated differently for that reason. The only time he was treated differently was by our principle when he was in grade eight”.
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