Two years ago actress Megan Fox said her son wearing dresses to school instills confidence in him. Now the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles says her oldest son, 8-year-old Noah has been subject to “mean, awful people and cruel people” on the online.

“I don’t want him to ever have to read that shit because he hears it from little kids at his own school who are like, ‘Boys don’t wear dresses,'” Fox said in a recent interview with InStyle.

The Transformers actress cried when she was asked about her children during the interview, as InStyle reported the following:

When I ask her about her kids, Fox does something women are told constantly to avoid in professional settings: She cried. At first, she apologized for her emotions but then immediately stopped herself and went on with what she was saying. Like her epiphany around her career, she acknowledged there’s no need to hold back a feeling just because of some arbitrary behavioral rule set out for women. And when it comes to her “babies,” all that matters is protecting them, especially her oldest, 8-year-old Noah, who has been subject to “mean, awful people and cruel people,” online. “I don’t want him to ever have to read that shit because he hears it from little kids at his own school who are like, ‘Boys don’t wear dresses,'” she says.

In 2019, Fox defended her then 6-year-old son wearing dresses to school in an interview with The Talk, saying that she wanted him “to be confident, no matter what anyone else says.”

“He likes to wear dresses sometimes,” Fox said. “I send him to a really liberal, like, hippie school, but even there — here in California, he still has little boys going, like, ‘Boys don’t wear dresses,’ or ‘Boys don’t wear pink.'”

“And so, we’re going through that now, where I’m trying to teach him to be confident, no matter what anyone else says,” the actress added.

“He had stopped wearing dresses for a while,” Fox further disclosed. “He just wore one — two days ago, to school — and he came home, and I was like, ‘How was it? Did any of the friends at school have anything to say?’ And he was like, ‘Well, all the boys laughed when I came in,’ but he’s like, ‘I don’t care, I love dresses too much.'”

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.