A teenage boy said that he was punished by his high school in Clyde, Texas, for wearing nail polish.
According to the New York Daily News, 17-year-old Trevor Wilkinson, a senior at Clyde High School, claims he received an in-school suspension earlier this week, when he returned to school after the Thanksgiving holiday, for violating the school’s dress code. The teenager claims he was being punished because he had painted his nails.
“Imagine your school not allowing boys to paint their nails and giving boys [in-school suspension] for it,” he tweeted. “And the whole administration being okay with it, homophobic and sexist? Welcome to West Texas,” he wrote, adding a smiling cowboy emoji.
Wilkinson, who’s openly gay and “beyond proud,” decided to take action and started an online petition to convince his school to “allow males to wear nail polish.”
His petition, which is posted on Change.org, had more than 45,000 signatures by Saturday afternoon and crushed its intended goal of 50,000 names. The goal has now been set at 75,000.
Wilkinson hopes to show the school that “it is okay to express yourself and that the identity that society wants to normalize is not okay.”
