I have a bunch of cousins that I grew up around, because my mom and her two sisters are joined at the brain or something. It's a great way to grow up, and my cousins are all like siblings to me. I have three female cousins who are all 3 or 4 years older than me. When I was a kid of about 6 or 7, they used to love to put makeup on me and dress me up like a girl. For them it was great fun, and I didn't really mind all that much; it was nice at that age to be included in the older kids' fun, and I didn't really think about it in terms of anything sexualized. It was just fun. But then some male members of my family started making fun of me really hard about it, and I tried to pretend it never happened. (I was an incredibly sensitive kid. I once cried for hours when my mom ran over a toad, and I pretended to be sick the day we had to dissect a frog in middle school--just illustrative examples; it's pure coincidence about the species similarities.)

I don't know if being picked on had much to do with it, but at this point in my life, I am what most people would consider to be a man's man. I like sports and drinking beer often (e.g. this very moment), and most people who know me have never seen me get upset about anything. It's just not something I do in public (and really not that often in private, either). I had a phone conversation with my mother recently in which I cried, and she was so taken aback that she was left kind of speechless (I truly hadn't cried in over 5 years; the last time was my grandmother's funeral). I don't know when I made the transition from overly sensitive kid to hard hearted adult, but on some level I admire people like the author of this piece, not because I think that there is anything transformative about a male wearing nail polish (it's not really that big of a deal, dude), but because we should all feel comfortable enough to express ourselves without shame or embarrassment.

Humans have feelings; that's part of the human experience. I've let my steadfast refusal to express any emotion whatever ruin two good relationships, but I think (hope, really) I've finally learned my lesson. Unfortunately, it's a bit too late, it seems, to save the current one, but at least I know now that it's not possible to be happy by suppression. If wearing nail polish is how one chooses to express one's happiness, then I think that's a better solution than just ignoring that feeling.