This Article is From Jun 21, 2018

Allahabad Boy, 9, Bullied For Wearing Lipstick. Then His Cousins Did This

When he wore lipstick, the 9-year-old boy had a derogatory term hurled at him.

Allahabad Boy, 9, Bullied For Wearing Lipstick. Then His Cousins Did This

Diksha Bijlani tweeted images of all the siblings wearing lipstick to support their cousin

A lot of us woke up Thursday morning to see a heartwarming story going viral on Twitter. A nine-year-old boy from Uttar Pradesh's Allahabad was bullied for wearing lipstick, so his elder cousins came out in his support; all of them wore bright red lipstick in solidarity too. The incident was tweeted by Diksha Bijlani, who identified the boy only as her cousin and referred to him as  "Little Cuz" throughout her viral Twitter thread. 

According to Diksha, her cousin is "the most 'effeminate' in the house." He loves to paint his nails and learn home science. This often leads to mean-spirited jokes and homophobic comments being directed towards him. When he wore lipstick recently, he had a derogatory term hurled at him.

"So he hid behind the curtain & under the bed, shielding his lipcoloured face from the camera & from his mom," writes Diksha on Twitter.
 
To support their "Little Cuz", all the elder siblings in the house came together and wore lipstick to make him feel "comfortable and accepted."

"He felt a specially empowered when he saw my brother wearing it," tweets Diksha.
 
The wonderful picture which shows Diksha and her siblings in all their lipsticked glory has gone viral with over 4,000 'likes' and hundreds of retweets.

The delightful result of their significant gesture of support? Their cousin came out from hiding to smile for the camera.
   
Diksha concludes her thread writing, "So important to tell little kids gender is a spectrum... I hope all of us tell kids we know that they are valid, they are accepted, & they are beautiful today. I hope we don't become the bullies we warn them of."

The gesture even empowered the nine-year-old to stand up for himself when he was told pink is for girls. "Gender is not real. Yesterday me and my brother both wore red lipstick along with didi," he told an elder of the household the next day, after he was reprimanded for riding a pink-coloured bicycle.
 
The story of the young boy who broke gender rules has received much love and support on Twitter:
 
And in case you're wondering how "Little Cuz" feels after receiving so much love and attention on social media, Diksha tells NDTV he has no idea of the viral fame he has achieved since he is busy at school! "The trending thing happened overnight, so we'll probably tell him when he returns," she says.Click for more trending news


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