Different Circumstances. Different Outcome.
There's a recurring theme that I've seen time and time again, and I recently saw it stated more boldly than usual -- if your daughters fall into the princess-pink-sparkle trap, it's your fault for exposing them to it in the first place.
::sigh::
I've said how I feel about the whole gender and kids thing lots of times before, so I won't bother again, but when the article said "She wouldn't love the terrible Disney Princess universe if you hadn't shown it to her and bought into the idealism yourself," I knew I should roll my eyes, close my laptop, and never visit that particular site again.
Kids have personalities.
They have opinions.
They have them starting at birth.
There ain't a darn thing anyone could have done to stop Alexis from falling head-over-heels in love with all things Princess by the time she was two years old. I don't know how she first saw them. I don't know how she got the idea that she should pay attention to them. I know nothing except that one day she didn't seem to know Cinderella existed and the next she was begging to have all of the Cinderella things.
I still don't understand it. And that's okay. She and I don't have to like the same things. She can be awesome while dipped in glitter and pink with a crown atop her little head. I can be awesome while glaring at all of those things. It totally works.
Now with Mila, things are a bit different. While Alexis existed in a bubble with very few opportunities to discover "girl stuff," Mila is surrounded by it. She breathes in just as much glitter as I do because Alexis sneezes glitter all over the place. There's an endless supply of Princess dolls, tea party supplies, and soooooo much pink.
Mila walks right past all of it. If you open the door to the playroom, she might play with a doll, but she's more likely to start pushing around a car. She scoffs at the pile of dress-up clothes. She shoves the tea part supplies out of the way because STUFFED MONSTERS! HOORAY!
I don't know how that happens. I mean, it just is. One kid came equipped to love the Princess crap. The other one came equipped to love the Minion crap.
All of the Minion crap.
If it's bright yellow and says "Bee-do bee-do," Mila loooooooves it. She lives it, even.
I don't know how that happened either.
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Reader Comments (5)
Hahaha, minions. Oh man. Ugh.
As long as it's the yellow minions and not the purple minions, I don't think anyone needs to panic. (And even then, just make sure you can run faster than she can, and you remove all freeze-ray guns from her vicinity.)
Alternatively, Disney/the pink princess glitter brigade is extraordinarily good at marketing. The only way I could have prevented exposure of that stuff was to never take my daughter to Target, let her interact with any peers, or accept any gifts from relatives (who had been politely pointed away from the pink/Disney/glitter stuff when they had asked for gift ideas that they promptly ignored). I didn't force it on her; she chose it.
My favourite saying these days to my girls who are now 16 and 21? YOU BE YOU. Works for the little ones as well. Enjoy these Minon and Princess years. :)
i love how wildly different they are. each so spectacular in their own right. can't wait to watch them rule the world...together.