My daughter had her 4th birthday and all she wanted was Princesses. A princess cake, princess gifts, a princess dress and a tiara, of course. There has been so much recently about how bad princesses are and how they consume our little girls and are certainly bad role models. I don't disagree 100%. I want my daughter to dream about more than just a handsome prince coming to sweep her off her feet and marry her. I want her to dream that she can do anything and be anything, and she most certainly does not need some prince charming to help her achieve happiness. Dora seems to be good for promoting independence and careers like doctors, , and thankfully she still likes Dora. So I try to let her know that she can go to college and do awesome things before becoming a Mommy - because she has asked on more than one occassion when she can be become a Mommy. Yikes. It also doesn't help that she has a crush on Mason at school and I came upon them holding hands in the playground one day.
With that being said, my inner Girlie Girl cannot help but love all the princess stuff, at least for now. It's cute, and for a 4 year old, it truly is innocent. She loves the pretty dresses and sparkly things (I still love sparkly things!!), and thankfully hasn't requested a Ken doll for herself yet (she saw one at Target and thought her brother needed it). I don't see her pining over the lifestyle of a princess, but she does love to run around in her Ariel costume and plastic high heels. Thankfully she is mostly pretending to be a Mommy. If she is still doing this with seriousness when she is 10, then I'm going to have to call in the big guns for some kind of princess shock therapy.
Little girls will be little girls, and as long as their strong female role models are not sitting around trying to fit a glass slipper on their foot, they will most likely strive for something greater than sitting around waiting for some non-existent ideal prince of a man (sure William has some annoying habits that Kate can't stand . . .). My daughter strikes me as a strong willed little girl who won't settle for anything less than doing what she puts her mind to. And so in the meantime we are going to enjoy the Princesses, the pink, the purple, the tiaras and the sparkles because soon enough she is going to be an emotional teenager trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. And when that happens, I'm sure I will long for the days when she pranced around in her princess dress and nothing made her happier than Barbies and plastic heels.
With that being said, my inner Girlie Girl cannot help but love all the princess stuff, at least for now. It's cute, and for a 4 year old, it truly is innocent. She loves the pretty dresses and sparkly things (I still love sparkly things!!), and thankfully hasn't requested a Ken doll for herself yet (she saw one at Target and thought her brother needed it). I don't see her pining over the lifestyle of a princess, but she does love to run around in her Ariel costume and plastic high heels. Thankfully she is mostly pretending to be a Mommy. If she is still doing this with seriousness when she is 10, then I'm going to have to call in the big guns for some kind of princess shock therapy.
Little girls will be little girls, and as long as their strong female role models are not sitting around trying to fit a glass slipper on their foot, they will most likely strive for something greater than sitting around waiting for some non-existent ideal prince of a man (sure William has some annoying habits that Kate can't stand . . .). My daughter strikes me as a strong willed little girl who won't settle for anything less than doing what she puts her mind to. And so in the meantime we are going to enjoy the Princesses, the pink, the purple, the tiaras and the sparkles because soon enough she is going to be an emotional teenager trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. And when that happens, I'm sure I will long for the days when she pranced around in her princess dress and nothing made her happier than Barbies and plastic heels.
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