Before I had a little girl, I was certain about one thing—if I ever had a daughter, there would be no princess stuff in our house. No explosion of Pepto- Bismol pink. No Disneyification of everything from her toothbrush to her sippy cup.
We actually visited the Magic Kingdom just before I conceived my daughter. Walking around with my two little boys, I rolled my eyes at the little girls in their polyester finery and prom updos. First of all, it’s a little hot in Orlando for synthetic fabrics. Second, allowing your little girl to be a princess, all the time, seemed so anti-feminist. So unoriginal. When I discovered I was pregnant, I told myself that any daughter of mine was going to run and jump and tomboy her way through life.
Cut to three years later. I have a daughter who does gymnastics all day long, who easily keeps her two older brothers in line, who is the very definition of self-esteem. She also does all this in fuchsia polka dot leggings, a purple T-shirt and hot-pink sneakers. If it’s not pink and/or purple, Maggie’s not wearing it. The French schoolgirl blouses and navy dresses I bought for her hang in a row in her closet, forlorn, under-worn. It’s really only worth the struggle to get her to put one of them on if it’s Easter Sunday or picture day at Gymboree. Otherwise Maggie is adamant about her early-Belinda- Carlisle look. “I love pink!” she shouts, then strikes a gymnast’s I-stuck-thatlanding! pose.
Similarly, Maggie is drawn to all things princess like a moth to a flame. For the first two years of her life, she was fairly oblivious—if she saw Snow White or Cinderella on a coloring book, she’d crow, “That you, Mommy!” But then one night, Maggie’s doting babysitter brought her a gift—a pink princess toy cell phone with Cinderella on it. Maggie clutched it to her chest, madly in love. The floodgates were opened.
We went on vacation last month, and sitting on the chaise lounge next to us were a pair of Disney princess flip-flops, with genuine imitation jewels. Maggie spotted them and gasped, like Carrie Bradshaw seeing the latest Christian Louboutins.
“Would you like to try them on?” I asked Maggie. She nodded, eyes wide. Once the flip-flops were on her feet, she turned them from side to side, admiring the sandals from every angle. “Dem for a pretty princess,” she breathed. And in that moment, she became one.
Maybe it was crazy to think that I could keep everything princess out of my daughter’s life. We would have to be living in a cave for Maggie not to see this stuff and want it. And there’s no denying that it delights her. Maggie is overdue for new sneakers, and part of me wants to go to the shoe store without her and guessti mate her size, since if she comes with me, she will no doubt pick the most bedazzled, Sleeping Beauty-covered ones in the store. But if those are the ones she chooses with her heart, why should I tell her she can only have the understated Tretorns I prefer? My job as a parent is not to shape her as I would wish, it’s to encourage her to be herself, to dream big, and to follow where that leads.
Last night, after I read Maggie her bedtime story, we had a little talk.
MOMMY: So, Maggie, what are you going to be when you grow up?
MAGGIE: A princess.
Just as I had suspected. I tried redirecting the witness.
MOMMY: That sounds fun, but it might be hard to make that happen. If you can’t be a princess, then what will you be?
MAGGIE: Um. A queen.
MOMMY: Okay, a queen. That might be hard, too. What if you can’t be a queen either?
MAGGIE: Then I be a tiger.
Well, that was more like it.
MOMMY: A tiger! Wow, that sounds exciting. Where would you live if you were a tiger?
Maggie looked at me. Wasn’t it obvious?
MAGGIE: In da castle with da queen and da princess.
My daughter has her future well planned, and who am I to tell her differently? Princesses know what they want.
Amy Wilson is a mother of three, and the author of “When Did I Get Like This?” (William Morrow) and of the one-woman show Mother Load. She blogs at motherloadtheblog.com.
