That Girl

For many reasons, I've decided to try taking a break from my Facebook ranting and do it here instead, since this is my own "private" space.  Facebook has a way of making me even angrier about things than I originally was, and so I feel a need to put some distance between me and the social network for awhile.

My latest and most continuous rant is about the way that our society treats our young girls.  Having suffered through bouts of teenage anorexia, bulimia and body image issues myself, I know how the pressure to conform to a predetermined idealized standard can be overwhelming.  I feel a need to rage against this for my own daughter.

But, it's not easy.
When you go to the costume store at Halloween, and the "boy" section has superhero options as well as career options (fireman, doctor, soldier, SWAT team member), and the "girl" section has only princesses and fairies...
When you go to the shoe store and the boy shoes are in a variety of colors and interesting character choices, and the girl section only offers pink shoes with the Disney princesses on them...
When your daughter is in love with the "How To Train Your Dragon" movies, and asks only for Hiccup and Astrid for Christmas, but the toy company has decided to make action figures of only the male characters from the movie, despite the fact that Astrid has a central role...
When you go to the newest Disney princess film, that's been marketed as the anti-princess movie because the girl can "do it on her own without a guy," but she still has to end up falling for a guy at the end of the movie, drilling in the point that a girl needs a guy in her life to feel complete...
When you go out in public, and the only thing people can talk to your daughter about is her looks--her hair, her beauty--and she begins to think that is the only valuable aspect of herself...
When your daughter tells you it's more important to her to be beautiful than it is to be smart...
When your daughter is afraid of getting a haircut because she wants her hair long and flowing like the Disney princesses, and thinks that's what makes her special...


These are the reasons I rant.  It's easy (actually, I think a cop out) for people to say, "Ah, it's just a phase!" or "You're her mother!  Your influence is what matters, and she'll outgrow it!"  I don't buy any of that.  The outside world has amazing and sometimes irreversible effects on the psyche of our young people, and no amount of "Mama loves you for who you are" and "Your heart is what makes you beautiful!" is going to compensate for the Am-I-not-so-pretty? images of Disney princesses and other media propaganda that is thrown at my impressionable four-year old all the time.  It's insane.  And so I rant and rage and try to rail against the status quo.  I try to start the dialogue with people who might never have considered this issue before.  I talk to my daughter all the time about the many reasons--none physical--that she is special.  I try to be the anti-pop culture.

But I fear I am failing.  Tonight, my daughter came into the house upset, after having played with some of the neighborhood girls.  She announced that it made her sad that those girls were smarter than she is.  When I asked her why she thought those girls were smarter, she said, "Because they have light hair" (they're blonde).

Here we go again.