The War on Girly

Recently, in a conversation with my daughter’s sister’s mother (trust me, this is not the most confusing relationship you can get when you adopt), I made the comment that if I had had control over the situation, there would be a lot less Barbie in my daughter’s life. But, she arrived at my house with a number of Barbies and a love of playing with them, so, short of taking away some of her favorite toys for no reason beyond the fact that I am not a huge fan, I had no control in the matter.

I do not hate Barbie. I just think there are better toys out there, toys I would rather my daughter play with. But trying to prevent Pop Tart from playing with Barbies would make me a hypocrite. And even worse, a hypocrite that she would have found out easily enough.

You see, I played with Barbies as a child. I had lots of Barbies; Barbies that I loved. In fact, I loved a couple enough that my parents, in their saving of some of my childhood toys, saved two of my Barbies. Pop Tart has them now. (See what I mean that she would easily have found me out.)

My attitude, and hypocrisy, is not unique among my friends. I have a friend who refuses to let anything that says “Barbie” into her house, and her daughter owns no Barbies. That same friend cannot leave the house without makeup on. I recently did a series of Facebook posts trying to decide which dress to buy for a wedding I am going to. Most of the women I know really enjoy dressing up and looking “pretty”.

I have friends with little girls who share articles on Facebook about never calling a little girl “Princess”, about how they are insulted when you compliment their daughter’s looks instead of something else, about their quest for clothes for their daughter that do not have pink, that do have trucks and dinosaurs. And for the record, many of these people have daughters under 2 years old, so none of this is about the child’s preferences. (And I’ll be honest, at under 2, no matter the gender of your child, compliments about eyes and smiles and cute little faces are about all I have got. They do not really have personalities yet, and unless they are a prodigy of some sort, there is not a whole lot of intelligence to compliment. I guess there are compliments about how well they are walking or crawling, but really, that is it.)

Now, I have no problems with girls wearing dinosaurs and playing with trucks. But it seems to me that a number of women I know do have a problem with their daughters wanting to dress like a Princess and playing with Barbies. Myself included. And that is not helpful to our daughters.

Let me put it this way, when was the last time you saw an article of any sort that said you should not call a young boy “sport” or that a parent refused to allow any Hot Wheels in their house? There are plenty of articles about how boys should be allowed to wear pink and dresses and tutus if they want to. And I completely agree. Just like I agree that girls should be able to dress like Batman.

The problem I see is that for many girls of my daughter’s generation, the daughters of my friends and peer group, they are still not being given the choice. When I was young, girls played with dolls and My Little Pony. Boys played with action figures and Transformers. Neither really had a choice. There were boys’ toys and girls’ toys.

We are slowly moving away from gendered toys, which is great. Except for one thing. We still look down on girls’ toys, unless it is a boy that wants to play with them. Instead of girls’ toys being the only acceptable toys for girls, we are moving to a generation where the only acceptable toys for girls are the traditional boys’ toys. We do not want our daughters playing with Barbie. We are not fans of Princesses. And heaven forbid our daughters want to wear pink.

This is, perhaps, not a widely spread problem. It is quite likely confined to women a lot like me. We are in our 30s & 40s. We waited to have children. We have educations and careers, and we want our daughters to know, in the very core of their beings, that intelligence matters more than beauty, that they can be doctors and engineers as easily as they can be teachers and librarians. We want so much for them.

And what we want is removing a choice. It is removing from our daughters their right to be girly. And it is hypocritical of us.

I not only played with Barbies, I had six Cabbage Patch dolls (and I could still tell you every single one of their names). Now, my brother and I used to combine his He-Man Castles with my My Little Pony Castle, and use them as terrain as the GI Joes, riding My Little Ponies, battled Transformers and GoBots, so I did have a lot of mixed gender play, too. But the girl toys were mine. And I loved them.

And having those toys, playing Barbies, and buying outfits for my dolls, did not turn me into some person who only cares about looks. It did not make me subservient to any person. I do not hide my intelligence or my ambition.

This is honestly about choice. I do not want Pop Tart playing with Barbies because someone told her that, as a girl, she is supposed to play with Barbies. But if she actually likes it, why should I object?

She is more “girly” than I am, but I cannot honestly say she is more girly than I was at the same age. C worries that she is getting interested in makeup and becoming obsessed with the idea that she needs to shave her legs because society is telling her that is what she should feel. And I understand that concern. I have that same concern. But at this age, besides reminding her that she does have choices, I do not know that she is self-aware enough to know why she really wants to experiment with makeup. She just wants to put pretty colors on her eyes, more because it is what she sees older girls do. Is this about being overly concerned about how she looks, or is it just a natural part of growing up, the very normal preteen desire to be older, to be seen as older, to be treated more like a teenager than a kid?

While I would prefer she accessorize her Princess dress with an eye patch and cutlass (and some days she might), I have to accept that there is also a desire for glitter and lip stick. And that is ok. We have to let go of what we think our daughters (or our sons) should like. We have to let go of OUR wants for THEIR personalities.

With any luck, they will all want to rescue a Barbie (and her fabulous wardrobe) from a fire while wearing a Superman Cape, tutu, and toe shoes. But if they only want to be Superman and fight fires, that is okay. And if they only want the Barbie, the tutu, and the toe shoes, that’s okay, too. (Actually, that’s a lie. Toe shoes are not okay. Not for anyone. They are objectively horrible and cripple dancers. Friends don’t let friends wear toe shoes.)

We have this strong belief that our daughters can be anything they want, except that in many cases, it is more of a belief that our daughters can be anything WE want them to be. And that is not the solution. We really do need to let them be anything they want, and that includes being “girly”.