Just a few months after giving a moving speech at this year’s Video Music Awards about challenging her daughter to break gender norms, Grammy-award winning singer Pink has announced that she’s raising her children gender-neutral.
In a recent interview with British magazine The People, Pink revealed that her children, 6-year old Willow Sage and 11-month-old Jameson Moon are growing up in what she considers a “label-less household.”
“We are a very label-less household. Last week Willow told me she is going to marry an African woman. I was like: ‘Great, can you teach me how to make African food?,’” the 38-year-old singer told The People.
For the artist it’s important that children see these messages and she’s proud to see that ideas are shifting.
“I was in a school and the bathroom outside the kindergarten said: ‘Gender Neutral – anybody,’ and it was a drawing of many different shapes," Pink explained to The People. "I took a picture of it and I wrote: ‘Progress.’ I thought that was awesome. I love that kids are having this conversation.”
The singer has been very candid on how she’s raising and teaching her children what it means to defy gender norms. During the 2017 VMAs when accepting this year’s Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award she told the audience a conversation she had with her daughter, who’s classmates were bullying her for “looking like a boy.”
“When people make fun of me they say I look like a boy, I’m too masculine, I have too many opinions, my body is too strong and I said to her ‘do you see me growing my hair … changing my body … changing the way I present myself to the world?‘,” said Pink. “Baby girl, we don’t change. We take the gravel in the shell and we make a pearl and we help other people to change so that they can see more kinds of beauty.”
The singer is also featured on the cover of the Jan. 2018 issue of Cosmopolitan where she discusses the dating advice she offered to her daughter when it comes to knowing he worth.
"She said to me the other day, 'How many boys can I have at once?' And I said, 'Excuse me?' I said, 'Probably none of them because they won't deserve you,'" she shared. "'They have to be kind, respectful, they have to be chivalrous, they have to be good to their moms, they have to be good looking, they have to be funny.'"
Pink is not only dismantling gender norms when it comes to parenting, but also through her music. She recently dropped her music video for her single, “Beautiful Trauma,” where she and actor Channing Tatum give a satire performance on gender norms.
