Jacki handed me a toy yesterday that stunned my warrior woman speechless. For anyone who’s come into contact with my warrior woman, you’ll appreciate the severity of the situation. The toy was called “Grow Your Own Princess” and it’s a tiny little girl doll with a crown and a white dress that will grow to ten times its size if you leave it in a glass of water for ten days. So far, pretty interesting, mostly innocuous toy. On the package is an interview with the princess trapped in plastic. And here’s where the trouble begins.
What are your favorite sports?
Anything with a cute skirt.
What are your hobbies?
Shopping, shopping, and shopping!
What are your favorite things?
Boys and gossip.
What are your least favorite things?
Bugs and getting dirty.
It took my warrior woman two days to fully recover, and here is the resulting rant.
GIRLS DON’T PLAY SPORTS TO LOOK CUTE
Girls play sports because they are fun, because they’re good at them, and maybe even because they’re good exercise and will result in a healthier and more attractive body. The skirt does not enter into the equation, and if you think I’m wrong, ask yourself how many girls were little skirts without needing a sport as an excuse.
SHOPPING IS NOT A HOBBY
This is nothing but a ridiculous, blatant, and disgusting attempt to make good little consumers out of the next generation. The princesses, the special, beautiful little girls shop to have fun, you should too! Not to mention that it discourages developing actual skills, creativity, and interests, in favor of hanging out at the mall and spending all your money on useless crap like this toy.
BOYS ARE PEOPLE, GOSSIP IS EVIL
Of the things you like, boys should not be one of them, because boys are not things. Boys are not all alike such that they can be liked as a common entity. This is a good thing for little girls to learn, because they will be lumped into “girls” in a very similar way. Gossip destroys relationships, creates hatred, and is one of the nastiest habits one can develop. It is all-around, unredeemably bad.
BUGS ARE COOL AND DIRT WON’T HURT
Want to know why we have so few women in the sciences? How about preconditioning girls that they are un-feminine if they like bugs? This has gone beyond telling girls that they are “bad girls” if they get their dresses dirty, this has moved to encouraging girls to internalize a dislike of dirt, which can easily enough turn into a dislike of sports, hard work, several viable career options, and primes them for a lifelong devotion to housework. ‘Cause we haven’t had enough of that in the world.
Enough of this! Enough telling our precious little girls that their ideal archetypes are vapid, decorative, boy-crazy, gossiping, nit-wits. Enough of that.
Been working on exactly this with the girls I nanny just today. Daddy tolerated them not picking up dog poo or taking out the trash and even dropping dishes with old food rather than clean them because “it is icky and girls don’t like to touch icky things” as he told the poor brother who had to do all these things alone. I was reminded of something a lady at church said when we were kids “A mother will put her hand in anything”. When did the cultivation of mental feebleness and squeamish distaste become a cultural imperative? The girls learned quickly not to squeal “icky!” around me to get out of chores. It is much less effective on me and mommy.
Hear hear! I would have to say that women who demonstrate the traits mentioned in the final paragraph are the ones I find least interesting.
What I find more attractive is a woman who demonstrates intellect and has solid relationships.
I like the sciences, and agree that there should be more women working within them.
Don’t know how you would get girls to like bugs though… It’s almost as if there’s a natural revulsion wired into their feminine brains. I would like to end up marrying one who likes them, or at the very least is not repulsed by them, because some bugs are awesome.