Mum Furious After Son In Dress Told By Sainsbury's Driver: 'You Can't Be A Fairy' | HuffPost Life

'I just couldn’t believe it when I heard it.'

Joanne Webb— SWNS

A mum has criticised Sainsbury’s after a delivery driver reportedly told her four-year-old boy that he shouldn’t wear a sparkly fairy dress.

Isaac Armitage had been playing in a black and purple fairy outfit with his little sister when he answered the door to the un-named driver.

Mum Wendy Armitage, 36, said she overheard the driver say to Isaac: ‘Someone needs to take you to one side and have a word with you, you can’t be a fairy, you should be a superhero.’

Isaac, who wore the fun outfit a few times a week, has been left upset by the incident and Armitage said he now rarely wants to dress up.

“I just couldn’t believe it when I heard it,” Armitage, from Effingham, Surrey, said.

Tony Kershaw / SWNS.com

“If [the driver] had said it’s unusual to be a fairy, we wouldn’t have have thought too much of it,”Armitage continued.

“But saying someone should take Isaac to one side implies he was doing something wrong.

“I feel disappointed that there are still people in this world that ask questions like that and and think it is their right to tell other people what they can and cannot wear.

“My son has been more reluctant to wear his fairy dress since, he has only worn it once or twice whereas he used to wear it all the time.”

SWNS

The delivery driver had gone to Armitage’s house on 13 August. She was upstairs in bed as she has a chronic pain condition that affects her mobility.

Her husband Laurence Armitage, 35, had been in the kitchen unpacking the shopping after Isaac answered the door to the driver.

“He was wearing a fairy dress up outfit and so was his little sister,” explained Armitage.

“He likes answering the door when he knows the delivery driver is coming.

“I was upstairs having a bed day as I have a disability and heard the driver say to my son: ‘Where’s mummy?’ and Isaac said I was upstairs.

“So he asked Isaac: ‘Are you the doctor and your sister the nurse?’, which I thought was a bit sexist, and he said: ‘Why are you wearing a fairy dress?’

“Isaac said: ‘Because I am being a fairy’ and the driver said someone should take him to one side and have a word with him.”

Isaac first developed a love of dressing up at the age of two after coming across a big box of outfits at a parent toddler group. As well as his fairy outfit, he also regularly dresses as Darth Vader, a doctor, nurse and vet.

SWNS

The family have a bag of mixed dressing up clothes and Isaac likes the dresses and the fireman outfit.

“He’s definitely very imaginative,” Armitage said. “He’s always playing make believe and being different characters. Even if he doesn’t have the dress up things to do it.

“When he didn’t have a magic wand, he made one himself and he will often cut up bits of cardboard to make props.”

The mum said she has since tried to explain to both of her children why the man said what he did. But as they are so young they have been left confused by what happened.

She added: “I tried to contact Sainsbury’s customer service afterwards and couldn’t get through, so wrote on their Facebook page where they replied to me.

“I got a reply which said: ‘Sorry about that!’ and asked me to send them a message explaining what happened and they said they’ll look into it.

“We didn’t get any real apology though and I asked what is going to happen from here and they said it has been reported to the online manager at that store for them to look into it.”

Armitage now hopes the delivery driver gets “re-trained” so that no other child should be made to feel the same way.

A spokeswoman for Sainsbury’s said: “We have apologised to the customer for these inappropriate remarks and taken suitable action with the colleague.”

Before You Go

Transgender Heroes

Munroe Bergdorf(01 of07)

Munroe Bergdorf is a London DJ, designer, model and activist.

She has spoken out about the difficulties and abuse she has faced as a transgender woman, shedding light on the issues facing the trans community, as well as bravely discussing her own experience as a victim of attempted rape.

Bergdorf has encouraged transgender people not to be afraid of their identity, speaking out for Pride London’s #FreedomTo campaign earlier this year.

After experiencing bullying as a teenager, Bergdorf said she had a lightbulb moment when she realised she had to “start being true to herself”.

She has since described the decision to begin her transition as the “best decision I’ve ever made”.

She told the Daily Mail: “I’m so much happier now than I was growing up.

“I want people to know that it's okay to be different, and that you shouldn't be scared of being the person you are.

“I talk quite openly now about what's I've been through and frequently speak publicly about trans rights and community issues.

“I think it's important that the world understands and respects transgender people, the struggles that they face and the rights that they deserve.”

Paris Lees(02 of07)

Paris Lees is a journalist, presenter and transgender rights campaigner who has challenged how the media talk about transgender issues.

She founded the first British magazine aimed at the trans community, META, as well as working for a number of other publications. Lees has also made appearances on Question Time and Newsnight, as well as speaking at the Oxford Union.

She currently works with Trans Media Watch to help Channel 4 remove transphobic material from its content.

She has also spoken out over a number of incidents deemed transphobic, including media coverage of transgender teacher Lucy Meadows and a column by Julie Burchill in which she described trans people as "a bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs".

She was awarded the Positive Role Model Award for LGBT in the 2012 National Diversity Awards, Ultimate Campaigner at the Cosmopolitan Women of the Year Awards, and also topped the Independent on Sunday’s Pink List in 2013.

After a tough start in life, which culminated in a spell in prison, Lees spoke of the change in media coverage of transgender people.

Speaking when she was named Young Campaigning Journalist of the Year award at the MHPC 30 To Watch awards earlier this year, Lees said: “"When I first transitioned I was depressed and isolated. I looked to the media for inspiration and all I saw were people like me being ridiculed.

"Five years on and things are looking very different." (credit:Dan Dennison via Getty Images)

Dr Jay Stewart(03 of07)

Dr Jay Stewart was honoured for his services to the trans community with an OBE in 2014.

He is a co-founder of Gendered Intelligence, a not-for-profit group which aims to increase understandings of gender diversity through creative ways, working with the trans community and those who have an impact on the lives of trans people. The group particularly specialises in supporting young trans people aged 11-25.

Stewart led ‘What makes your gender? Hacking into the Science Museum’ – a £10,000 project funded by Heritage Lottery Fund with London’s Science Museum - as well as a number of other projects.

As well as chairing Gendered Intelligence’ board of directors, Stewart also acts as a mentor and youth group session leader.

Gendered Intelligence also provides age-appropriate workshops and assembles for primary school children to help them explore gender roles. When the initiative was criticised by a select few, Stewart spoke out on the importance of such education.

In a statement on Gendered Intelligence's blog, he said: “It’s so important to teach children in schools that they can be anything that they want to be, regardless of the gender that they have been given at birth. They can be engineers, nurses and politicians; they can be caring and kind, strong and forthright; they can wear what they like and look how they like. It’s okay for all children to be girlish, boyish or anything in-between.

“Our work at Gendered Intelligence includes going into primary school settings. It’s important because gender stereotyping and reinforcing gender norms start from a young age.

“If we are going to tackle the prejudice in society towards those who express their gender differently from what is considered the norm, we need to introduce teaching early on in a person’s education.

He added: “Trans people – like all people – have a right to an education in a safe environment. The only way to make school safe for trans pupils, and safe for everyone to express their gender, is to start talking about gender variance at the earliest possible opportunity.”

Sabah Choudrey(04 of07)

Sabah Choudrey helped found Trans Pride Britain, the first trans march in the UK.

They also founded the QTIPOC Brighton Network for queer, trans and intersex people of colour, and desiQ for queer South Asian people in the London/South East area.

Choudrey works for Allsorts Youth Project in Brighton as an LGBT/Trans/POC Youth Support Worker challenging racism in LGBT scenes, providing advocacy services and ‘Unlearning Racism’ training in LGBT spaces.

They also work with Gendered Intelligence, providing support and mentoring for young trans people of colour.

Choudrey speaks out about their experience of being trans and Muslim, as well as speaking at events such as TEDx talks.

In a blog on HuffPost UK, Choudrey explained: “It has always been apparent to me that queerness is not something visible in non-white cultures. This was the history I was told. But this was the history rewritten by those that colonised the land of my mother and father, who criminalised queer in our land, and from then on, queer became synonymous with sin.

“It is no surprise to me that it has taken me three more years to speak publicly about being Muslim and trans.

“We're in a culture that teaches queer people that we don't deserve to be religious. We are taught to put faith only in ourselves because self love is the only love we will feel. Queer people don't deserve faith or hope, because why pray when you're already queer?

Choudrey continued: “What society teaches us about religion is that it's a weakness, and I felt for years that it was being an Atheist that kept me strong. It wasn't until I was in a relationship with an Atheist and I finally talked about my Muslim background did I feel like Atheism had taken something from me I never wanted to let go of.

“Accepting that I am Muslim again has been the hardest part of my journey. Accepting Islam back into my life has been the most challenging part of my identity. It does not feel easy yet. But it does feel true.” (credit:Helen Thomas)

Rebecca Root(05 of07)

Rebecca Root is an actress who appeared in the lead role in BBC romcom ‘Boy Meets Girl’, and has also appeared in a range of programmes including Hollyoaks, Casualty and Midsomer Murders. She will also be appearing in the upcoming film ‘The Danish Girl’ alongside Eddie Redmayne.

However the actress is also a qualified voice coach - the only trans person to work as a voice and speech specialist in the UK today.

She runs transgender voice adaptation sessions to help people to find a voice that they feel fits their gender. Her thesis, ‘There and Back Again: Adventures in Genderland’ has also attracted international attention and Root resented it at Harvard University.

Speaking about the benefit of speech therapy for people who are transitioning, Root told the Telegraph: “The voice is more evident than what's between your legs, or on your chest.

"I know some girls [people who have transitioned to female] who just don't care, who really don't mind sounding like what's considered a typical bloke.

"But some say they simply won't talk because they haven't got what they think is the 'right' voice.

"They won't make phone calls, and when they have to go to the shops they don't answer questions, they just mumble something. They're afraid of opening their mouths and that's such a shame."

Root is also a mentor for young transgender people through Gendered Intelligence. (credit:David Livingston via Getty Images)

Fox Fisher(06 of07)

Fox Fisher starred in Channel 4’s documentary ‘My Transsexual Summer’ in 2011, which revealed the journey of a number of transgender people as they undertook a range of gender affirmation procedures.

He went on to become the co-founder of My Genderation, an ongoing documentary project exploring gender variance.

Fisher told the BBC: “Not only are we also trans* [written with an asterisk to denote a catch-all term for those defining across the gender spectrum] people, we have our own experience on the other side of the camera, as documentary subjects, on My Transsexual Summer, Channel 4, 2011.

“These factors give us a very unique perspective and we are in a trusted position within a growing community.

“We work alongside many UK and global gender support groups which share our vision of changing public perceptions already clouded by existing media fabrications and negative reporting of trans* people. Although things really are changing, there is a long way to go.

“We make films independently, to humanise the process of transition, to allow the audience to empathise with trans* issues. We provide a platform to consider gender and all its constructs. We aim to provide engaging films on various aspects of being trans* and coming to terms with gender variance."

He is also an ambassador for All About Trans - a project that "looks at creative ways to encourage greater understanding between trans people and media professionals to support better, more sensitive representation in the UK media."

Fisher continues to speak out about the issues facing trans people in the UK.

He also helped to found Trans Pride Brighton and has co-written a children’s book, entitled ‘Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl?’. (credit:thefoxfisher/instagram)

Alex Bertie(07 of07)

Alex Bertie is a trans YouTuber who has documented his experience of his transition since he was a teenager.

Although just 20, Bertie has developed a strong following online with more than 150,000 subscribers and over nine million views on his channel TheRealAlexBertie.

In his videos, Bertie describes various aspects of life as a transgender man, including medical appointments, relationships and coming out.

He also provides helpful practical guides on his channel on topics such as buying chest binders, hair styling and coming out.

As well as providing advice and support to young trans people, Bertie also gives tips to people who may have trans friends, family or colleagues, including how not to offend people and appropriate words to use.

He told Ten Eighty magazine: “I’ve actually had a lot of parents talking to me. Like, parents have inboxed me on Facebook, which is so weird. They’re, like, older than my mum, and they’re open to talking about it, which is just amazing. They’re willing to reach out to young people, which I think is really, really cool.

“Some people come to me with queries. They think their child might be going through what I’m going through, and they want to help them with that as much as possible. Other times, they’ve been directed by their kids to come and talk to me, or to watch my videos.”

He added: “I think I do get a lot of positivity. More than I thought I’d get. Now and then, I do get the odd bit of confusion, or some hate, but that’s easily nipped in the bud just by information, just by education."

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