Talking to My 10-Year-Old About Chaz Bono

My 10-year-old daughter, Lily, is a big fan of Dancing With the Stars.  She discovered the show last year while channel surfing, which I was thrilled about, simply because it wasn’t another snarky tween sitcom.

Of the 12 stars competing last season, she initially had heard only of Chelsea Kane from the Disney Channel’s Jonas L.A., and Kirsty Alley from the Jenny Craig commercials. By the show’s mid-point, however, Lily had strong opinions about everybody. She said Alley, who wound up in second place, was the most fun. She also liked Pittsburg Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward and agreed he deserved to win. 

Kendra Wilkinson, eliminated in week seven, bugged her because she was always flaunting her voluptuous body. But then again, 10-year-old girls weren’t what the audience producers were after in casting Hugh Hefner’s former girlfriend and mansion mate.  

The only person Lily truly disliked though was judge Bruno Tonioli.  She actually does a pretty good impression of the Italian choreographer flailing his arms and salivating, “that was so SEXY!”  Fortunately, neither of us caught the episode where ABC censors bleeped him for the way he described Ralph Macchio’s handling of partner Karina Smirnoff in her cheetah inspired-costume. 

“You were too rough with your p---y,” I later heard he’d said, leaving the audience visibly aghast. I was glad to have escaped being forced to explain that one.

When the cast of Season 13, which kicks off Monday, Sept. 19, was announced last week, the only name my daughter recognized this time was soccer sensation Hope Solo. But when controversy erupted over Chaz Bono, the show’s first transgender contestant, Lily began to ask questions.

A conservative group called onemillionmoms.com is urging a boycott of the show, calling Bono’s casting “completely unacceptable.” Some critics even claim that watching him on the dance floor would be harmful for children.

One psychiatrist, Dr. Keith Ablow, an analyst for Fox News, went so far as to assert that celebrating Bono on DWTS "is the last thing vulnerable children and adolescents need as they wrestle with the normal process of establishing their identities...”

Others say Bono looks like a man, so there’s no reason to tell children anything.

Ironically, my daughter already knows that Bono is transgender because she caught some of the protest story on Access Hollywood. I could have avoided the subject and simply said I didn’t know when she asked me to explain what the fracas was about. That’s how I responded last summer whenever we passed billboards for the movie Friends With Benefits. Several times Lily asked what that title meant, but I just didn’t see any age appropriate way to discuss casual sex with a 10-year-old. The same goes for the “Fully Exposed” slogan on the billboard for a strip club in Canoga Park that we past last week on the way to soccer practice at the Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Park.

Explaining that Bono was born female but changed her appearance to become a man, however, was pretty straightforward. She did have a few follow-up questions about how the transformation was accomplished. Through plastic surgery and hormone injections, I told her. We live in Encino, it’s not like she hasn’t seen people who’ve gone under the knife or used injectables to alter the way they look.

When her questions were answered, she said, “You know what the really weird part is?”

“What?” I asked.

“That someone would rather be a boy.”