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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA little girl becomes Cinderella at Disneyworld. It's a story with a twist at the end though.
Our hotel room seemed to radiate with pink glitter. The Disney World staff knew it was my daughters fifth birthday and that she loves everything princess, so they filled our room with princess galore. There was a Rapunzel balloon and a Little Mermaid coloring book and a Cinderella Barbie doll as if Cinderella could get any skinnier. On the bed was a piece of paper announcing that the next day, my daughter Willa had an appointment at something called The Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. Beyond that was a giant pile of sugary confections, like a hyped-up mountain surveying the scene. I reached over and bit off the head of a chocolate Mickey.
I have been a tomboy all my life. When I played with dolls they were usually being sacrificed in some sort of erupting volcano-like mud hole in my backyard or running for their lives from monsters who had taken over my Tonka truck. I know I had some dresses. Ive seen pictures of me wearing them, around the same age as my daughter. But I look stiff and decorated, more like a tree at Christmastime than a girl in a dress. It just wasnt my thing.
It is, however, very much my daughters thing. I dont know how it is that in the modern era, I still cant get decent reception on my cellphone but somehow traditional gender norms are silently communicated and crystal clear. My partner and I certainly didnt teach our daughter to like pink and ruffles and such. And I cant fathom some genetic or biological nodule that predisposes my girl to like dolls while little boys like trucks. Baloney. But somehow, even in the midst of our hyper-liberal and hyper-diverse neighborhood with girls and boys of all kinds on display every day, it happened. Did I do something wrong? Is feminism mysteriously skipping a generation? Meanwhile, I have to bribe her to wear jeans.
People say its a phase and not to resist it or else Willa will just dig in longer. Which is how we found ourselves, in Disney World, at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. We wait in a large room near the foot of Cinderellas Castle with a dozen other 5- and 6- and 7-year-olds and a frightening number of even younger girls. And one boy, a little Y chromosome ray of light amid the depressing clouds of gender stereotyping hovering in my conscience.
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More:http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/daughter-to-disney-ill-take-the-tiara-you-keep-the-prince/
You go Cinderella!