Queen Mother

I just read an article - one of those ones that talk about princess culture and how terrible it is and how it is eating out daughters and teaching them to sit around and wait for a prince.

And yes, I get it and, wow, man, I could talk all day about beauty culture and misogyny and female empowerment, but you know what?

I think they may be wrong about this one.

I don't know for sure.

Here's the thing, when I was a little girl, I loved princesses with a mad passion.  And it had not one blessed thing to do with anything LIKE a prince or getting rescued and EVERYTHING to do with:

1)  Beautiful.  Poofy.  Dresses.
2)  Being in charge of everything.

I think we may be over-thinking the anti-princess thing.  Is it realistic to pretend you are a princess?  No.  But I'm not sure you can require children to be realistic.  My living room floor is not actually hot lava, but it makes life more interesting for my kids to PRETEND that it is.  So, hey, pretend away.  Life is hella boring sometimes.

There is a whole heck of a lot of shit to be worried about for our daughters as they grow up and have to start relating to boys in a world that is not always kind to women.  So maybe we should just let them be little girls for a while.  Let them enjoy the glittery dresses and the tiaras. The princes and the passiveness?  I think that's just our own baggage.

Surely, there is space in our understanding of the world to get that there is an inherent pleasure in beautiful dresses and gorgeous castles and magical things.  And, holy cats, I'd rather have my daughter wearing a polyester princess dress than a tube top that says "hottie" and high heels (I have actually seen this).

Which is all just to say that not only will I allow Lilly to HAVE princess dresses, I will allow her to WEAR princess dresses even in front of judge-y people at the ice-cream store.