Beyond a shadow of doubt

A FATHER AND SON’S JOURNEY TOWARDS SELF-ACCEPTANCE IS THE SUBJECT OF A MOVING NEW BOOK

WHEN Colin Stuart was three he had an Elsa doll that he loved. He would take it everywhere he went and show it off to everyone he saw until the day he came home from childcare crying because someone had told him Elsa was for girls.

That night his father, Scott, sat down and wrote a story about a boy who loved princesses and fairies and dressing up. It was one of the hardest things he’s ever done. But the resulting book, My Shadow is Pink, is having a profound impact not only on Colin, who is now 7, but everyone who reads it.

The beautiful rhyming story, aimed at children aged 3-9, touches on the subjects of gender identity, self-acceptance, equality and diversity. It’s a story about daring to be different and being yourself.

“It would be easy and comfortable to say that I was always the 100 per cent accepting father of a son who loves Elsa and things that are ‘not for boys’. But the truth is that, while I never expressed any of this to Colin, and we let him fully lean into the things he loves, it challenged everything that I grew up with,” Scott says.

“I grew up with clear guidelines of masculinity and this doesn’t fit into that, so it was a journey for me to become fully comfortable with him being himself. That journey is reflected in the book, with not just the boy learning to accept himself, but also the father needing to overcome his own discomfort and fully embrace his son.”

In a family where everyone has blue shadows, the book is about a young boy born with a pink shadow who, more than anything else, loves to wear dresses and dance.

Scott says the night Colin came home from childcare upset at being teased for playing with “girl toys”, he and wife Melina looked for age-appropriate books that would help their son.

“I tried to find some books or shows for his age group that represented Colin in a positive way, that is a boy who likes dresses. I could find barely any, and most of them weren’t particularly empowering. So, that night I sat down and wrote the first draft of my book,” Scott says.

“It has really been resonating with an enormous amount of people in ways that I never imagined. I think everyone can relate to having a shadow that sometimes we try to hide, and having the courage to show who we truly are.”

He admits the process of writing the story was tough.

ALTHOUGH Scott had already written another children’s picture book as a passion project (Alone: A Story of

Friendship in the Darkness of Space) while juggling a full-time job as a designer at the Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation, this time it was personal.

“It was definitely a challenge to make sure that everything really reflected the emotions and journey of accepting your ‘shadow’, so leaning into the discomfort that I used to feel was tough. But our journey has been such an enormous part of our life, I sat down and wrote the first draft in a single evening — then spent a couple of years editing it,” Scott says.

“I wanted to make sure that everything in this was both really empowering for kids, but also very real in terms of what that journey can look like. It would be easy to tell a story of bullying, but that’s not the journey here, and not what the book is about. This is about the internal process of acceptance and so there is never anything negative said or done by any other child in the story.”

Colin says he loves the book.

“I love the shadow and the pictures and the dress,” he says.

Scott says he feels so proud knowing Colin loves the book and seeing a boy like him in the media has been incredibly positive for him. “It has helped him grow more confident and comfortable being himself, whether that is dressing up as Elsa, Batman or just in his day-to-day life,” Scott says.

The pair have become a social media sensation, with more than 17 million people viewing a touching Tik Tok video that shows Scott and Colin dressing up as Elsa to go to the movies. “My son wanted to dress up as Elsa to go to the cinema. I said there is no way you’re doing that … alone,” Scott says in the video as they walk off hand-in-hand dressed up.

“We can teach him to run away from who he is and what he loves to try to please other people or we can teach him to be himself.”

COLIN has experienced teasing since he started school, but Scott and Melina are encouraging him to make his own decisions and stand up for what he believes in. “He has an Elsa lunch box and water bottle that he takes to school and he was made fun of for it.

“After that we really sat down and chatted with him about having the courage and confidence to be himself and how there will always be people who don’t like you doing that. But there will always be people who like you because of it — and we would back him whether he wanted to keep bringing (the lunchbox) or not,” Scott says.

“He decided to continue taking his lunch box and water bottle to school, and the next time someone said something about it, he told them that he loved the lunch box and he’s going to keep bringing it. Since then he hasn’t had any other negative experiences.”