Princess Syndrome
December 8, 2010 by Shannon
This is the time of year when I become fully aware of the pervasiveness of princess stuff. In the stores, the gift catalogs, on the internet…everywhere you look there are tiaras, tutus and gowns marketed towards little girls. Is all this stuff just cute and girly, or does it send a message to little girls that their ultimate goal should be to look beautiful all the time to get “rescued” by the opposite sex?
Hmm…I’m still not sure how I feel about it. But I never thought I’d have to think about it much until Ella was, like, 2 years old or something. Boy, was I wrong.
Kellan has come down with a bad case of Princess Syndrome.
Yes, my little boy is in love with princesses. The Disney kind, specifically. Cinderella is his favorite. He begs to check out every single Disney version of the Cinderella story at the library. If I manage to talk him out of borrowing three Cinderella books at a time, he moves on to begging for The Little Mermaid. At the grocery store one day, he spied a small display of Disney toys from several feet away. As we walked by, he clamored for a small Cinderella toy and….I let him have it. Under the condition that he buy it with the birthday money he got from his Aunt Judy.
Oh, help.
Now he begs me to act as the voice for that Cinderella doll. He informed me one morning that he had a dream that he drove Cinderella away from her mean stepfamily and that the two of them got married. He sleeps with her, bathes with her, and is planning a large family with ten kids. (He casually mentioned one day that Cinderella wasn’t feeling well because of the baby in her tummy. Wow.) His favorite toys are the doll and her two gowns, along with a string of pony beads that I let him thread the other day as a fine motor skill activity. He now pretends they’re the beads from the Cinderella story. In fact, he hounded me for materials to make a gown until I dug out a couple gold ribbons and an old sheet out of the basement. He even went so far as to ask that I sew the gown up for him. Um…I had to draw the line there.
And when I direct him toward the cute little Renaissance princess gown I bought after Halloween to use for dress-up? He wrinkles up his face and says it’s not “pretty” enough.
Sigh.
HOWEVER. As much as it drives me crazy that I have to help keep track of the tiny, rubbery clothes and itty bitty doll or risk major catastrophe, I will say that it’s kind of nice that he’s not obsessed with something loud and aggressive, like guns or something. I guess it could be worse.
Annnd….it gives me something good to tease him about when he’s bigger and easily embarrassed. Not that I would do that or anything…heh heh.
Comments (2)
Oh, that is so funny. And cute. Wow, I don’t know what I would do. Did you hear about that mom who was making the talk show rounds who wrote a book about her young son called “My princess boy”? He liked to dress up in gowns & it caused this huge uproar. I thought the family had a great attitude about it. The dad was fine w/ it & he was even a Marine or something.
I read somewhere that lots of little boys go through a princess phase and even like to wear dresses. This usually stops about the time they start going to school, but if he’s already starting a family with his cinderella doll I guess you’re probably in for at least 18 more years.