Parenting Without A License

Busting Out of Barbie

Posted by Kimberly on October 31st, 2007 — Posted in The Ladies

Unless you’re a particularly neurotic thoughtful parent, you don’t spend every moment absorbed by your child’s development into a human being you’d be proud to claim in the candy aisle of the grocery store.  Sure, we all make decisions every day based on how we want to shape our children into thoughtful, thinking adults.  We impart values along with our breakfast cereal choices, the clothes hanging in the closet, and the random crap stuff things we buy to fill up the toybox, and at some point we probably sat down and thought about what values we wanted to impart and how the things in our homes accomplished that.  And then, of course, we actually had kids and got so busy keeping our heads above water we didn’t have time to endlessly navelgaze about what message the Barbie pool sends anymore.
Children are in many ways the ultimate forest/trees experience.  Oftentimes we are so busy raising them, it’s hard to stop and really see who they’re turning into.  We hope, of course, that we’re doing it right.  We’re certainly trying our best.  But sometimes it’s just really, really hard to tell if the lessons you’re trying to teach are really making their way in there.  Sometimes though, the most unexpected of moments can give you that insight and let you know that in spite of the million moments a day that you screwed it up,  overall, you’re doing ok.

I never expected Hallowe’en to be one of those moments.

The Ladies have been planning their costumes since July–some highly elaborate princess confection involving crowns, wands, stuffed unicorns, and a wagon doubling as a royal carriage.  I don’t know.  Frankly, beyond confirming that these plans involved only items already in the tickle trunk and therefore required no new expenditures from me, I didn’t pay much attention.  I’m pretty shameless, so the prospect of herding a Disney and a Barbie princess through the neighbourhood didn’t particularly phase me.  I mean, if I were the one doing the choosing I would have probably gone in a different direction, but I didn’t care enough to try to talk them out of it.

Nor did I agonize too much about what these choices say about their self esteem and body images.  They are, afterall, just costumes, and I think that my daughters are more charmed by the fluffy, sparkly skirts than the anorexic, vapid image that the feminist media tells me are the stereotypes for these characters.

When Diva Girl came to me last night to ask for a change in the costume plan, I was initially annoyed.  I know it’s a rite of passage to change your idea the night before, that all kids do it, but for crying out loud it was the night before.  Then I heard their new idea and immediately threw myself into figuring out how to make it happen for them.  My daughters, you see, have rejected Barbie and Belle in favour of……Hairspray.

That’s right.  Instead of being perfectly thin, perfectly stereotypical girls, Diva Girl and the Zen Baby want to be the fat chick and her slightly odd friend.  And inside I’m cheering. For myself.

In spite of the fact that I didn’t follow feminist party protocol and ban the Barbie, in spite of the fact that in flagrant violation of crunchy mama protocols we have a full library of Disney movies, my daughters still chose to reject conformity and embrace a different standard of cool.  It’s one of those moments where I think maybe, just maybe, I might be doing something right.

Now, let’s just hope that I can overcome my hairspray impairment and do their hair right as well.