As we were lying in bed with Aura the other night, reading her some princess story or another, I couldn’t help but snort with derision. “Seriously?” I muttered to Adam. “Am I going to have to burn my bra before someone finally calls Gloria Steinem?” He shushed me and continued the tale, which, if I’m remembering correctly, involved frog kissing and Machiavellian family members and eventually a wedding attended by a variety of exceedingly friendly wildlife.
That princess book was pretty much the only princess book Aura has ever chosen from the library. THANK GOD.
This is how I feel about THAT ONE.
Wait. It’s not just me, is it? There are others out there who hear princess stories and gag on the offensiveness and tiresomeness of it all, right? I mean, COME ON. Sure, pickings were slim in the Women’s Lifestyle Changes Department centuries ago, when most of these fairy tales were first penned. But marrying well cannot possibly still count as true ambition, at least not in this day and age. You don’t find the quest for royal marriage in most of Disney’s “boy stories,” do you? Nope. In those stories, talking cars win championship races and save floundering towns. I have yet to see one championship in a princess story, other than the breathless battle to get home by midnight without losing your other glass slipper.
A GLASS SLIPPER, PEOPLE. Cinderella runs around in shoes made of GLASS. As in glass that SHATTERS and CUTS and MAIMS. Yet I’m the one going to jail if Aura rides her tricycle on the driveway without a helmet.
ALSO. Real feet are not as small as a royal messenger's hand. I don't think. (I'm a size 9. So.)
Oddly, the princesses-are-always-beautful thing doesn’t really bother me. Of course I don’t think little girls should be obsessed with their appearance. But I enjoy an eyebrow wax and pedicure as much as the next girl, and I don’t think the unending global search for physical perfection is going to, well, end. (To clarify: I don’t actually enjoy waxing. As a matter of fact, I can think of approximately 472,000 things I’d rather do than have my eyebrows waxed. However, THIS IS WHAT SNOW WHITE TAUGHT ME.)
There is no way those suckers got that way through simple plucking.
I guess all I’m saying is that when we’re auditioning for role models, maybe princesses shouldn’t be first in line. At least not until they bulk up their resumes. I for one am going to need something besides First twenty years of life: Scrubbed and cleaned; locked in room by evil stepmother/witch/absentee father; escaped through help of magic/woodland creatures/plot hole; found salvation in figurehead royalty. For pete’s sake, Rapunzel spent eons locked in that tower, doing nothing but growing hair. Couldn’t she have once thought, “Hey! You know what I’m doing when I get out of here? I’M GOING TO GET MY FREAKIN’ M.B.A.!”
Perhaps I'm aiming a bit high in this case. If not the M.B.A., then at least a cosmetology license.
Recently, as we were running late for an appointment, Aura lingered in the hallway, trying to zip her jacket. “No, Mommy!” she cried out when I tried to help her, swatting my hands away. “I want to do it by myself!”
It was all I could do not to keep rushing her or tell her to forget zipping up altogether. Instead, for once, I forced myself to simply stand and wait. And after a couple of minutes, she did zip the jacket.
“Look, Mommy!” she exclaimed happily. “I did it all by myself!”
That? That right there is the only kind of princess story she needs.
Inspired by what has become a swath of unseasonably warm weather, Aura and I headed over to Harvard Square today for a little exploring. As we were tooling around the area, I decided to formally introduce Aura to Harvard itself. “Maybe you’ll want to go here someday!” I chirped sunnily to Aura, ducking through one of the many arched gates that dot Harvard Yard.
A minute or so into our tour, Aura had already stopped listening to my speech on the importance of higher education, preferring instead to climb staircases and run on the lawns. I was soon reduced to talking to myself, raising my voice during the important parts to regain Aura’s attention. “Schools like Harvard are certainly a possibility IF YOU BUCKLE DOWN,” I yelled. “Never forget that MERIT SCHOLARSHIPS can be yours!”
It was somewhere around the time I was explaining college’s potential for “LIFELONG FRIENDSHIPS!” and “SELF DISCOVERY!” that I first noticed the many flyers dotting the campus. The more of them I read, the softer my diatribe became.
By the time I finished reading these, I was starting to change my tune. “But there is certainly nothing wrong with smaller, lesser known schools!” I called to Aura as she whipped back and forth in front of the famed Widener Library. “Many state schools produce a DIZZYING array of successful graduates!” I cried out, pulling Aura back toward one of the campus gates. Every time a passing student smiled at Aura, I glared in return, muttering things like “Sexual deviant!” under my breath.
Then I saw this flyer.
It wasn’t until Aura started tugging on my hand that I realized I had been standing in front of this particular flyer for an unnecessarily long time. But…vajazzled? In a legendary place of higher learning? The editor in me took offense with the j in place of a g, the proofreader in me bemoaned the underline in place of italics, the music lover in me reared back in horror by the bastardization of jazz.
And the mother in me? “FORGET WHAT I SAID,” I announced to Aura, scooping her up and racing for an exit as fast as my legs could carry us. “THIS IS NOT THE SCHOOL FOR YOU.”
Another day, another $48,868 per year saved. And Aura will never touch a stick-on jewel again.
I always knew those pegged jeans would come back to bite us in the butt.
February 17, 2010
…And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
DAY 8
Setting: 1980s, Earth
…And God looked down upon what he had created and was not pleased. “These people!” God said. “They are spending wildly and unwisely. Just look at all those Swatch watches and Tupperware parties. It is now time to show them the error of their ways.”
And so God introduced a new creation, one He believed would finally and quickly demonstrate to people how foolishly they were wasting their money. It was a creation, He predicted, that would end the problem once and for all. It was:
THE CLAW MACHINE
Unfortunately, God may have given His people a little too much credit. Turns out that as soon as one generation learns its Claw Machine lesson, another one comes along and needs some firm, costly educating, all over again.
Everyone blames the recession on the mortgage industry, but God? As always, He knows better.
***The winner of the Linaloos.com giveaway is Val! Yay, Val!
