Princessification

[luzclarita]

It came out of nowhere. Two weeks ago Alice asked me, "am I bootiful?" I said, "of course you are" without hesitation. Then she asked, "are you bootiful?" And I said, "Yes. We are both beautiful." Then after a minute I added, "all people are beautiful unless they have ugliness in their hearts." But I don't think she can understand

Comments

[cemeteryconsort]

Oh boy. lol Maybe you can sneak in some Dorothy (aka wizard of Oz) type of outfits or images so it's not all pink princesses. Some pretty denim, ho down dresses? lol

Also sneak in Mulan, she's pretty and an action hero. :)

[candeam]

I think that you have to tread very carefully here, because there is a danger that you could be sending her a message that girly things are bad. They aren't bad, what's bad is the counter-message that because she is a girl she must love girly things. There isn't anything inherently wrong about being a princess either (think Princess Di who used her position for humanitarian aid) ... it is the culture that tells girls that being a princess in the Disney sense of the word is more appropriate for them than, say, being an engineer (i.e. sole aspirations are marriage and beauty). She needs to have options, not to have her boundaries redefined for her, i.e. at least she still likes trucks and sports. To some extent that is saying that what is marketed as a traditionally male activity is better than activities or things that are marketed as traditionally female activities, which to me is a continuation of an anti-women message. That being said, princessification (ha!) is a problem we face in our culture so I totally get your frustration.

[luzclarita]

You are right. I think the way I wrote "at least she still likes trucks" was a bit of an over-reaction. I absolutely do not want to tell her feminine identifying things are bad or wrong. It's more like I just have this fear that she will someday conform to what a group likes instead of following her own muse. I guess I feel like I stopped following my muse for awhile and it caused nothing but pain, so I don't want that to happen to her. Seems ridiculous to worry about since she's only two, but peer pressure is already real. Her best friend at school does those pagents and I am admittedly freaked out about the pagent thing. I also want her to feel beautiful but not to feel like she has to rely on something else like a dress to be beautiful? But that is such a complicated thing to try and communicate. Ulgh.

[sistrmoon]

I remember really wanting a girl child but also dreading it because of my history of eating disorder and my own disdain for a lot of gender stereotyped things. Rough waters to navigate in this society.

[luzclarita]

Yeah. I think because my sister has an eating disorder that I am hyper-vigilant about this stuff. There's nothing wrong with rocking a dress, but when does it turn into self-destructive evil? I have thought and thought about why that I grew up with no concept of body image problems at all. Like I would look in a mirror and go, "I look cool," pretty much no matter what I had on and feel happy. I honestly never even thought about my body as being something worthy of thought until I went through what I call pregnancy puberty. I guess I don't know what happened with my sister because she won't talk about that and so it just makes me feel even more terrified. Plus, my daughter is not blonde, blue-eyed, and naturally thin the way I am so I worry for her that she won't have that worry free adolescence that I did. I'm starting to realize how much of my body security had to do with just randomly filling a stereotype that is popular in our era and society due to my genetic luck alone.

[luzclarita]

Thanks for the recommendation. It's definitely from school. Her best friend started doing toddler pagents and those pagents are terrifying to me. But now her whole classroom has got the bug -- even a couple of the little boys are going full princess. I'm kind of delighted that her school is awesome enough to not say a word to those boys about it. Alice says, "Addy is the best princess and then me and then Simon and then teacher Jessie."

I like your idea of trying to look for the positive spin in the princess thing. We really haven't shown her any movies yet, so maybe in a year or two we'll think about that when she starts to ask for them.

My husband is just anti-princess because he says it's a marketing scam and he doesn't want to spend all our money on cheap princess crap.