The Internet has spoken. A news story from Germany has led to a man by the name of Nils Pickert being granted the epithet “Dad Of The Year”. The reason? He wears a dress.

Details are sparse, but they go like this. Pickert’s five-year-old son has always, we are told, had a penchant for dressing in girl’s clothing. For his part, his father “didn’t want to talk my son into not wearing dresses and skirts.” So he set up designated “skirt and dress days” on which his son could dress like a girl.

Father and son (is there a mother? Siblings? We are not told) live in an unnamed but “very traditional” village in southern Germany. During one of these “dress and skirt days”, a resident of the village was staring so intently at the little boy that she walked into a lamppost. This proved the catalyst.

“After a lot of contemplation,” Pickert told EMMA, the German feminist magazine, “I had only one option left: to broaden my shoulders for my little buddy and dress in a skirt myself.” Bolstered by this support, apparently, the boy has now started “painting his fingernails” and has reportedly become impervious to ridicule by his peers. According to his father, the “little guy” has learnt to respond to detractors by saying “you only don’t dare to wear skirts and dresses because your dads don’t dare to either.” This, says Pickert, shows “how broad his own shoulders have become by now. And all thanks to daddy in a skirt.” It was this that led the gossip website Gawker to name him Dad Of The Year. Continue reading on the Telegraph website