"sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness" Galway Kinell
"sometimes it is necessary /to reteach a thing its loveliness"
"St. Francis and the Sow" by Galway Kinnell
This afternoon I went to a birthday party for the daughter of one of my friends. She was turning six and the party was held at the local children's museum. The party had a princess theme and kids were encouraged to come in whatever princess or knight regalia they possessed.
My kids are two and haven't amassed any regalia up to this point, so they wore their normal cotton rompers with their good leather Mary Jane shoes. Very cute.
The mother of the birthday girl is a good friend of mine and I don't fault her for anything I am about to say. This is my neuroses, not hers. But the party troubled me. The princesses were lovely in their various states of diaphanous pinkness. Their blond and red hair was caught up in crowns, with the occasional raven-haired, pale skinned Snow White look-a-like. The boys wore satin capes with shields and golden paper crowns like the ones you get for kids at Burger King.
The cake was magnificent. It was a chocolate buttermilk scratch cake layered up with pink icing to look like a ball gown with a real barbie torso and head on the top. Edible princess.
I know what I want to say next, but I'm not sure what tone to take. In my work, I write and teach a lot about feminism. But I am well aware of the reductive, humorless tact that some feminist arguments can take. At home, I am the mother of two Chinese born daughters. They love pretty things. They love twinkling white lights and pink dresses and I want to make them happy. I don't want their childhood to be a field upon which politics is played out.
So why did the party trouble me. The princesses represented in that princess diva, Barbie, and the princess guises of the other little girls form a matrix of physical and social ideals that aren't going to be open to my daughters. Mulan notwithstanding, my girls, whose roots are in Northern China and Mongolia, are unlikely to grow up to be long-legged, buxom Nordic or Teutonic beauties.
They are perfectly beautiful. Don't get me wrong. White babies look kind of anemic to me since I brought them home. But they aren't going to be princesses like the ones they see in books. Which begs the question, do they need to read those books? Do they need to hear about sleeping princesses awakened by the male gaze? Do they need to play with dolls whose feet are permanently arched for four inch heels? What happens when my beautiful girls or anybody's beautiful girls turn into women with normal rounded bellies and realistically sized breasts and 30 inch inseams? ( NOTE: I am six feet tall, so I have no idea what a normal inseam is. I am guessing here).
What do they do with that princess ideal they have internalized? As their mother, an over-forty, American white female, I fight with my inner Barbie ideal at least once a week. Can I protect them from the taunting of the inner Barbie? What about the taunting of the Barbie fan club that forms American advertising?
Or should I just have a stiff drink, lighten up and buy the Barbie. Maybe the one with brown hair. Maybe the Teacher Barbie.
"St. Francis and the Sow" by Galway Kinnell
This afternoon I went to a birthday party for the daughter of one of my friends. She was turning six and the party was held at the local children's museum. The party had a princess theme and kids were encouraged to come in whatever princess or knight regalia they possessed.
My kids are two and haven't amassed any regalia up to this point, so they wore their normal cotton rompers with their good leather Mary Jane shoes. Very cute.
The mother of the birthday girl is a good friend of mine and I don't fault her for anything I am about to say. This is my neuroses, not hers. But the party troubled me. The princesses were lovely in their various states of diaphanous pinkness. Their blond and red hair was caught up in crowns, with the occasional raven-haired, pale skinned Snow White look-a-like. The boys wore satin capes with shields and golden paper crowns like the ones you get for kids at Burger King.
The cake was magnificent. It was a chocolate buttermilk scratch cake layered up with pink icing to look like a ball gown with a real barbie torso and head on the top. Edible princess.
I know what I want to say next, but I'm not sure what tone to take. In my work, I write and teach a lot about feminism. But I am well aware of the reductive, humorless tact that some feminist arguments can take. At home, I am the mother of two Chinese born daughters. They love pretty things. They love twinkling white lights and pink dresses and I want to make them happy. I don't want their childhood to be a field upon which politics is played out.
So why did the party trouble me. The princesses represented in that princess diva, Barbie, and the princess guises of the other little girls form a matrix of physical and social ideals that aren't going to be open to my daughters. Mulan notwithstanding, my girls, whose roots are in Northern China and Mongolia, are unlikely to grow up to be long-legged, buxom Nordic or Teutonic beauties.
They are perfectly beautiful. Don't get me wrong. White babies look kind of anemic to me since I brought them home. But they aren't going to be princesses like the ones they see in books. Which begs the question, do they need to read those books? Do they need to hear about sleeping princesses awakened by the male gaze? Do they need to play with dolls whose feet are permanently arched for four inch heels? What happens when my beautiful girls or anybody's beautiful girls turn into women with normal rounded bellies and realistically sized breasts and 30 inch inseams? ( NOTE: I am six feet tall, so I have no idea what a normal inseam is. I am guessing here).
What do they do with that princess ideal they have internalized? As their mother, an over-forty, American white female, I fight with my inner Barbie ideal at least once a week. Can I protect them from the taunting of the inner Barbie? What about the taunting of the Barbie fan club that forms American advertising?
Or should I just have a stiff drink, lighten up and buy the Barbie. Maybe the one with brown hair. Maybe the Teacher Barbie.
posted by Sally at
8:27 PM
2 Comments:
I've often wondered how I escaped the princess ideal. Well, I don't know if I've escaped it, but it's not a big thing with me. I LOVED Barbies well into teenhood. I was a girly, stereotypical little girl in many ways, played with dolls, didn't do sports, didn't want to get dirty... And yet I grew up into a feminist, and back when I was still planning a wedding, I realized that I never did have the weird princess dreams that would dictate some sort of bridezilla gala affair. I don't feel entitled, I don't feel like I should be handed everything on a silver platter, I don't feel like I should be treated like a queen.
Matter of fact, sometimes I wish I had a few more princess demands in me. Maybe I need to cultivate them.
Anyway, I have no idea how this is helpful or contributes to your post. I'm glad that somehow, whatever my parents did, or didn't do, I didn't grow up with overwhelming princess ideals and demands and sense of entitlement, and thus don't have an accompanying sense of disappointment with the way the world is treating me. And if I ever figure out just how that happened, I'll let you know.
But my point was, it must somehow be possible to walk that line, give your kids Barbies, and still help them turn into strong, confident women in their own right.
Told you that you should post! I'm enjoying your blog, and I "linked" to you in mine. :)
By
Andrea, at 9:01 PM
These girls will be smart, strong, wonderful, independent ladies; I have no doubt.
They will either be girly girls or tom boys (probably one of each, heh).
By
Unknown, at 10:33 AM
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