By Eric Rockey
Pink Boy is a verite-style documentary profiling the challenges of raising a young gender non-conforming boy growing up in a conservative area of rural Florida.
Six-year old Jeffrey likes nothing better than to put on a gown and dance for his two lesbian moms, who adopted him expecting they would raise a boy. Mom BJ successfully avoided dresses and girls' toys her entire life and admits she initially had a hard time when her son expressed feminine interests.
"Pink boys" have their unique challenges: they do not neatly fit into a single gender box, and instead create a space between genders, which this film explores. They like to dress in girl's clothing and play with girl toys, but still identify as boys. These children often face widespread ignorance and shaming, sometimes from their own families. They often live with daily threats of bullying and violence and are at high risk for depression and suicide as they reach their teens.
Pink Boy's verite-style allows the viewer to experience life through Jeffrey's eyes. Thanks to supportive parents, we see Jeffrey confidently move between masculine and feminine in dress-up time at school, a rodeo in Georgia, and the ultimate holiday for a pink boy, Halloween. As Jeffrey increasingly wishes to be publicly identified as a girl called Jessie, his parents must learn both to accept and to navigate when it is safe for him in an often hostile environment.
|