Self-saving princess
Ok, so I am a little frustrated and upset. *Little* is the operative word, I just feel a need to vent, so feel free to stop here if you don’t want to hear a parent-centric vent.
I was talking about B with 2 co-workers, one that has 2 daughters, a 16 year old and a 3 year old, and another with no children in her early-mid 20’s. The other mom & I were talking about how annoying it is that they make pull-ups in girls and boys with gender-centered commercial characters and not in neutral colors or in just plain white. It annoys me mostly because I checked the site to see if there was a protection difference before I bought the stupid Disney Princess pants & this is what it said:
DOES IT MATTER WHETHER MY CHILD WEARS “GIRL” PANTS OR “BOY” PANTS? CAN’T I JUST USE UNISEX TRAINING PANTS?
As children go through toilet training, they become increasingly aware of gender differences. They look forward to becoming a “big boy” or “big girl.”
So, the answer is no, it’s not different, so my daughter will have Cars/Toy Story or whatever. The other mom nodded in frustration (she’d gone the other way, but understood my choice). The other person in the conversation said “That’s extreme, don’t you think? I mean she is a girl and she should get Disney Princess stuff because she needs to know about girl things. You can’t just show her “boy” things.”
First off, this person knows my kid, she’s met her. B is a lot like me, a tom boy who is also pretty girly, she tows the line. Personally, I felt Toy Story was pretty gender non-specific, and chose that - Cars came in, and I was OK with that, she picked out her own Lightning McQueen slippers so I figured she’d like them. She did.
Do I encourage boy things? Yes. Do I encourage girl things? Yes.
I let Brynne pick what she likes, we went Halloween shopping & the first candy bin she picked was a hot pink castle with sparkles, she totally could have kept that - well if she didn’t throw it across the store when she turned the corner & saw the Spiderman one. She wanted out of her tub early for her Robot jammies, but had to put on lotion first, and then wanted her toenails painted before bed.
She has tutus and dinosaur t-shirts. Ming Ming is her favorite Wonder Pet, and Pablo is her favorite Backyardigan. I think she’s pretty well rounded, and I don’t see why I should encourage her to be another way.
She likes to paint, and color, she likes superheroes and shoes, why do I need to expose her to mostly useless women that need someone else to save them? Has she seen princess movies? Yup. Do I show her all of them? Nope. When she is old enough to understand that it’s not an EXAMPLE, but a STORY, then we’ll move that way. When she decides that she wants to be Ariel for Halloween & not Spiderman the Dalek from Mars (no, seriously), I’ll support that.
Why does this make me a bad parent? Why is the assumption that my lack of desire to expose her to the “norm of femininity” that I don’t want her to be a girl? Ugh. This just gets under my skin. I love my daughter, I love her silly ideas and the fact that she doesn’t see a difference between boys & girls (ignoring that she thinks daddy has a tail like Oscar…). The first toy she goes to no matter where we go is ALWAYS a pink baseball bat or the glitteriest bike they have in the store, unless they have a Spiderman version. She is an independent self-assured kid and I’m not going to take that away from her by making her think that we are all in need of saving, and that our major goals in life should be how perfect our hair and makeup are to impress our “prince” as we wait patiently for his arrival.
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