Nils Pickert’s 5-year-old son likes wearing dresses. If anyone thinks that’s odd they can take it up with Nils. He’s the guy in the skirt. The German dad has become a role model not only for his son, but for parents around the world, after a photograph of the pair holding hands in red skirts spread across the internet.
“Yes, I’m one of those dads, that tries to raise their children equal,” he explained in an essay. Pickert never minded that his son liked dressing in little girl’s clothes, but when his family moved from West Berlin to a small southern town in Germany, he learned that other people did. That’s where the red skirt came in, a pants-free option Pickert himself would sometimes take back in Berlin, without getting even a second glance. He’d stopped wearing skirts when they moved to their small village, knowing a man in women’s clothes could cause rubbernecking accidents at the very least. But when his son asked his father to wear a skirt again, he decided to step up to the challenge.
Dad protects son from bullies by wearing a skirt
