Halle Berry Responds To Instagram Trolls Who Shamed Her Son For Wearing Heels

Halle Berry had a great response to Instagram haters who criticized her for letting her 6-year-old son wear heels

Recently, actress Halle Berry posted a video of her 6-year-old son, Maceo, trying on a pair of gorgeous heeled boots. Berry captioned the cute clip, “#Quarantine Day 12.” While the video was clearly an attempt to provide some much-needed, lighthearted content to the world, a slew of commenters felt the need to shame Berry for allowing her son to wear heels. Their main complaint? It’s “wrong” for boys to wear heels.

“This is damn shame this is [where] it starts in [the] home not society [these] parents smh,” one person wrote.

Another commented, “Stop letting [boys] men do this think it’s cute…where are the fathers when ya need em.”

“That’s just sad. Parents are so mean and not responsible to their children these days,” one Instagram user felt the need to say.

Other Instagram users made comments about how the actress is “making her son gay,” “emasculating” him, and that she had better give him a Playstation or Xbox instead. One person even asked if Berry and her son had been “talking to Dwyane Wade recently,” most likely referencing to the fact that the former NBA basketball player has a transgender daughter. Most of the criticisms come from a place of ignorance. While we’ve been making great strides in our conversations around gender, identity, and sexuality, some folks have intensely-rooted beliefs that stem from, quite frankly, a lack of education and awareness.

Instead of attacking the commenters right back, Berry handled the gross and insensitive comments in the classiest, kindest way possible. The actress jumped in after someone asked, “Is this your daughter or son” and replied, “Harmless fun. It’s tight on these kids right now. Let’s have a laugh and some compassion yawl!”

After someone wrote, “she’s having the time of her life lol,” accidentally misgendering Maceo, Berry responded playfully with, “Well it’s a he, and he’s having a ball. Tryna cope the best he can. Laughter helps a lot right now!”

Other Instagram followers defended Berry as well. “I did this when I was a kid, and I have a great father — I turned out just fine. Seems like you are the one [who] is missing a great father — because apparently yours only taught you how to be ignorant and narrow minded,” one wrote. “It’s not cute, it’s freaking adorable. Btw, I don’t know what u expect fathers to do, there is nothing wrong with it. Just live your life the way you want and leave other people’s lives alone.”

And some Halle Berry fans just wanted to let the actress know how much better 6-year-old Maceo walks in heels than them, which a lot of us can say, TBH.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time celebs have faced major parent-shaming on the internet — especially when it comes to how celeb moms raise their sons. In September 2019, Megan Fox received backlash for letting her son wear dresses. “I’m trying to teach him to be confident no matter what anyone says,” Fox said. Back in August, 2o16, Charlize Theron was shamed for encouraging her son to dress up as Elsa from Frozen. In 2018, Will Smith’s son, Jaden Smith, felt like he had to defend his choice to wear dresses. “In the next five years when a kid goes to school wearing a skirt, he won’t get beat up and kids won’t get mad at him. It just doesn’t matter. I’m taking the brunt of it so that later on, my kids and the next generation of kids will think that certain things are normal that weren’t expected before my time,” Jaden said.

Hopefully, we keep doing better and support people’s choices to express themselves however they feel like expressing themselves. The best rule of thumb? If you’ve got nothing nice to say, then don’t say anything at all. Simple.