When her young son wanted a Taylor Swift birthday party (because who wouldn’t want a Taylor Swift birthday party), one mom had the perfect response to a couple of haters.
Mom Jolene Dolo went viral on TikTok for sharing her response when the parents of one of the children invited to her 8-year-old son’s T-Swift party declined the invitation because it was “against their beliefs.”
@jolenedolo They are allowed to have their beliefs and i’m allowed to have feelsing about their beliefs. I didnt try to change their mind, i just wanted to talk about it on MY page. Tha ks for listening
#taylorswift #gendercreativeparenting #taylorswiftparty
“Initially, I wanted to respond and ask them to elaborate, because I’m not exactly sure what belief system you have — like, what religion is out here saying, ‘Thou shalt not listen to Taylor Swift?’” she said. “But me and my husband talked about it, and we decided that their text message seemed a little confrontational, because they could have just said, ‘No thank you, we will not be attending.’ It seemed like they probably wanted a response from us and we didn’t want to give them what they wanted. Also, it’s for the better that way. We did not want anybody coming to our party who is going to be feeling uncomfortable or making us feel uncomfortable, so it’s a good thing.”
Dolo went on to say that her son has never been one for traditional gender roles — because kids aren’t born with the inherent knowledge of societally created nonsense.
“My husband and I have been parents for eight years. Our son has always like the pretty things in life, so we are very used to parents and people gendering things like clothes and hobbies and toys,” she explained. “I wasn’t exactly sure how music fell into it. I know Taylor Swift is very girly pop.”
But when it came to this birthday party, this raised some questions for Dolo. Because, she explained, the pushback made her realize that while little girls are allowed to listen to and look up to male artists, that doesn’t seem to work the same way when the genders are reversed. How interesting.
“I always found it kind of weird that we don’t want boys liking women like that or looking up to women — like what’s the problem in boys liking women? Isn’t that what the goal is in some of y’all?” she said. “Because girls are allowed to look up to girls, and girls are allowed to look up to boys. But boys aren’t allowed to look up to girls? It’s almost like you think it would be a downgrade for them to look up to women.”
And there it is.
Dolo finished her video with this thought, which is really all there is to say about those silly parents who, at the end of the day, are just denying their child fun: “Lucky for us, there’s no shortage of little kids who like Taylor Swift, so we have a full house, and that just means one less mouth to feed.”
Amen to that.