She picked Charlotte’s Web! SQUEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s another princess-free Halloween! SQUEEEE!!!! I did NOT use coercion or bribery of any sort — and I have survived even this without ever uttering one bad word about princesses to my daughter. I save those for you all. And the people I work with. And my students. And my husband. And the mail carrier. And the dog… Read the complete Post.
Okay, so for the last month I’ve been obsessing in my own secret way over Halloween.
I love Halloween - it has always been my favorite holiday, because it asks nothing from you other than your creativity. What a delight. Over the years I’ve had some really great costumes too — I once went as a can of Tomato Soup, and made dh dress as Warhol, one year I was a picnic (you had to see it), once I was Molly Shannon’s Mary Catherine Gallagher from SNL (smellin’ my armpits all night, with great Read the complete Post.
When I was a budding feminist, characters like Cinderella and the Little Mermaid, (the 9 Disney damsels - “G9″ he he - didn’t become “The Princesses” until a marketing overhaul in 2001), and Barbie made my blood boil. Their big boobs, mini waists, and glamourization of victimhood infuriated me — role models of the most irksome kind. Today, as a parent, they still get to me. Add to this world of warped femininity the marketing juggernaut that is Bratz, and kaboom, and there is a lot to make my skin crawl.
But (did she just write “BUT”?), I have to confess that my sensitivities have changed. When I see princess paraphernalia, I cringe, but if I’m completely honest, Read the complete Post.
If I tried to start someplace coherent, it would be in the beginning, stories of my first struggles (many internal) with these issues, but I can’t remember where they began — debates over names, nursery colors, Christmas gifts..? I do know when they erupted — in September when my precious Thing 1 entered preschool (btw — that is an affectionate Cat in the Hat reference, not a callous disregard for her humanity).
After three years of constructing a tolerable pop culture world of carefully chosen books, a Read the complete Post.