Photo by Laura DossToday's guest blogger is Amy Wilson, the author of the hot-off-the-presses, insightful, hilarious, and touching book When Did I Get Like This? The Screamer, The Worrier, The Dinosaur-Chicken-Nugget-Buyer, And Other Moms I Swore I'd Never Be. In addition to reading her book, you can get more of Amy at her Mother Load blog. But first, read this.
Before I had a little girl in my life, I was certain about one thing: If I ever had a daughter, there would be no princess stuff in our house. No explosion of Pepto-Bismol pink. No Disneyification of everything from her toothbrush to her sippy cup.
Last night, after I read Maggie her bedtime story, we had a little talk. MOMMY: So, Maggie, what are you going to be when you grow up? MAGGIE: A princess. Just as I had suspected. I tried redirecting the witness. MOMMY: That sounds fun, but it might be hard to make that happen. If you can't be a princess, then what will you be? MAGGIE: Um. A queen. MOMMY: Okay, a queen. Huh. That might be hard too. What if you can't be a queen either? MAGGIE: Then I be a tiger. Well, that was more like it. MOMMY: A tiger! Wow, that sounds exciting. Where would you live if you were a tiger? Maggie looked at me. Wasn’t it obvious? MAGGIE: In da castle with da queen and da princess. My daughter has her future well-planned, and who am I to tell her differently? Princesses know what they want.
Second of all, allowing your little girl to be all princess, all the time, seemed so anti-feminist. So unoriginal. How could these people encourage their daughters to aim for being pretty, passive, and little else? When I came home from the Magic Kingdom and discovered I was pregnant, I told myself that any daughter of mine was going to run and jump and tomboy her way through life.
The muted French schoolgirl blouses and navy-blue dresses I bought for her last fall hang in a row in her closet, forlorn, under-worn. It is really only worth the struggle to get her to put one of them on if it's Easter Sunday, or picture day at Gymboree. Otherwise Maggie is adamant about her early-Belinda-Carlisle look. “I love pink!” she shouts, then strikes a gymnast's I-stuck-that-landing!pose.
We went on vacation last month, and sitting on the chaise lounge next to us, reserving the poolside spot for some other family, were a pair of Disney princess flip-flops. With genuine imitation jewels. Which looked like they had logged many miles. Maggie spotted them and gasped, like Cinderella seeing her glass slippers, like Carrie Bradshaw seeing the latest Christian Louboutins.
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