One of the many reasons I’m glad to have been born in 1986 instead of 2006 is that the Internet was in its infancy when I was growing up. My mother never posted bath pictures of me on Facebook, never complained about the trials and tribulations of potty training on Twitter. Images like HONY’s could never have gone viral. This young boy, no matter how he grows up, or who he grows up into, will always be that boy HONY posted about on Facebook. The image has been shared almost 60,000 times.
Had I been a young crying girl on a stoop, would Brandon have stopped, photographed me, and told my story? Perhaps. If he had, how would that have molded my identity? Would I have been comfortable deciding to date men later, lest I lose my poster-girl status as gay America’s Wunderkid?
As a society we still, to some degree, decry the sexualization of children. Blog posts about inappropriate clothing sold for girls at Target still go viral, even if we’re allowing our sixth graders to have intrauterine devices implanted without parental notification or consent. Publicizing and cheering children making sweeping statements about their still-nascent sexuality is a bridge we’ve crossed, somewhere along the line. As a parent, that is deeply troubling. As a child who once questioned her own sexuality, I can only feel relief that my parents’ generation was more level-headed than my own.
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