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.
I’d like to thank the Academy. Of Bad Parenting.
April 12, 2010
In retrospect, I really should have known better.
Aura has inherited a great many things from her father, including a love of coffee-flavored foodstuffs and an inclination to snicker at me when I am at my most threatening. She also shares his tendency to become completely and utterly submerged in the lyrics of a song. New songs, songs that especially strike their fancy, songs with an unusual tempo—one note and both Adam and Aura are goners, listening and memorizing with a fierceness last witnessed in certain Nordic warriors. Their posture goes slack, their mouths gape a bit, and conversation (at least on their end) screeches to a halt.
Honestly, the trance can be a bit startling the first time you witness it. But once you get used to it, you find yourself almost impressed by such pure, unadulterated absorption. Seriously: I’ve mentioned rogue rocket ships and flying cows and free milkshakes, with zero response. I did once snare Adam’s attention by yelling, “Look! Megan Fox is driving the car next to us, NAKED AND HANDING OUT BEER!” but later efforts proved that was a one-trick pony.
Given all of this, I really have no excuse for what happened a few days ago. In my limited defense, it was a beautiful day and I had just picked up Aura from preschool and we had the car windows down, encouraging the spring breezes to mess up our hair. When a hip-hoppy R&B song came on, I just left it, and we car-danced, or at least I did. I knew the song wasn’t going to be age-appropriate, but she was distracted and we were happy and there might have even been a rainbow and some frolicking elves. It was that nice of an afternoon.
Then we parked. As I was releasing my seatbelt, Aura piped up, “Mommy, what does sex mean?” For a second, the whole thing was a bit like a paper cut, when the shock of the unexpected pain makes the world go momentarily silent. Still in the driver’s seat, I swooned as images of second-grade navel piercings and a prepubescent subscription to Cosmo flooded my brain.
Then I recovered, for that is what GOOD PARENTS DO.
After a few unsuccessful starts, I found an explanation that satisfied us both, at least temporarily. “Oh! Sex? Sex is just a silly way some people say the number six. Isn’t that SILLY?” Once I started, it was like I couldn’t stop. “Just like some people say foove for five! One, two, three, four, foove, sex! IT’S SO SILLY, ISN’T IT?”
Days later, I don’t know what scenario scares me most: that Aura sees through the deception and asks again, or that she presents her newfound counting schema at school. As much as the resulting preschool progress report will pain me, I’m rooting for scenario #2. So what if she gets an Unsatisfactory in the Number Identification category? Screw ‘em. When she gets homes that day, I’m so going to give her a high foove.
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.
