I'd rather be a roving minstrel, myself

My good friend Cathy just sent me this really interesting article about Disney Princesses, which are increasingly taking up more and more playspace in my house. To educate those of you without kids, this is among the more popular toy lines for little girls right now. To link you to a place where you could buy them would be ridiculous; you can buy Princess branded toys EVERYWHERE: the grocery store, the dollar store, the drug store, department stores, online. Sometimes I worry that I will wake up one morning and find Princess branded tampons or oregano. It's an incredibly pervasive brand.

I've been struggling with the psychology behind it all since Doodlebug started being interested in Princesses in earnest shortly after Little Shmoo was born. I don't like the implied lessons of many of the princess movies; Cinderella sits around being abused by her family until her Prince rescues her, Ariel (the Little Mermaid) disobeys her father and gives up her voice to win the love of her Prince, Belle (the beauty in Beauty and the Beast) falls in love with the monster who imprisons her. Doodlebug shows little interest in the more empowered-looking princesses, Mulan and Pocahontas, so we haven't even seen those movies. I think soon we'll just rent them and see how they fly.

My worry is the same as the writer of that article -- that by combining my message ("You can be anything you want!") and Disney's ("Being pretty and scoring a Prince will make you completely happy!"), I'm setting up Doodlebug (and someday, Little Shmoo) to be convinced that she needs to be everything at once. I've not forbidden her to play with these frilly pink girly items, since they make her so happy, but I really don't like them. She knows it, but I've tried to be honest about it with her. I tell her I don't think the princesses in the stories are very interesting, that they don't do very exciting things, they don't seem to do things for themselves, and that I don't think it's good to wear dresses ALL the time because you can't do as much moving around in a dress. Doodlebug's answer is: "but I think they're VERY interesting!"

Well, you can't argue with that. So I don't.

For Hanukkah this year, we tried to balance the princess gifts with the non-princess gifts. We gave her three princess art project sets, and a Cinderella flashlight, but we also gave her some Strawberry Shortcake dolls, tickets to a music concert, and a huge tub of blocks. Of course, she uses the blocks to make a castle, and she wanted to know if she could wear a dress to the concert. She's a girly-girl, and Disney didn't make her that way. I suppose I should be glad that there are toys and stories that help her express that side of her, for now, and just keep gently repeating the messages I want her to hear in addition.

And for what it's worth, Little Shmoo seems to like trucks.