I’m not so much of a series person in the land o’blog. The one series, miniseries perhaps, I felt committed to was What Do Feminist Toddlers Wear? The little gal is many things these days. Toddler is not one. So the re-titled extension goes What Do Feminist Preschoolers Wear?
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When Saskia was handed down her first prairie dress—you know, like Little House in the—I was instantly enchanted, both because I lived in the books as a child (no exaggeration, I think I read many of them 50 times, maybe 100) and thus revered the prairie look and because the dress came from adorable Rebecca and she’d gotten it from bigger, adorable Ruby. The provenance of beloved clothing—aka hand-me-downs—charms me.
That Saskia connected to the dress didn’t surprise me. It’s a little too big, and it’s long, but, critically, it twirls. And my gal, she loves her twirling. She is a ways from serious Laura Ingalls Wilder ardor, although she’s listened in when I’ve read a couple books from the series to Remy. Her aspirations have more to do with princesses and ballerinas these days than tomboys or blind girls on prairies. Yet, the pretty flowered fabric and the length and the obvious specialness of the dress spoke to her. The dress went on—and we had to wrest it off three days later. Not even a bath served as punctuation enough to get her to part with it.
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Sometimes, when she and her pals are in full princess gear or tutuesque frilly skirts, I do a disbelieving double take. Did feminist parenting lapse somewhere between the pink and the purple? What did I invite into my home anyway? It’s not like I would ban any clothing or even object; it’s more like a little pinprick of utter astonishment, fleeting and small and sharp. Funnily, the long prairie dress doesn’t elicit any such response. Perhaps, I’m charmed into complacency. Bedecked in the clothing of my childhood fantasy life, I feel comfortable. In her too-big clothing with old-school pretty winning out over frilly or glitzy it’s easy to see what I can’t see nearly so clearly when she’s in princess costume—that she’s a very small person trying to step into a bigger person’s world in her own way, which is, in part, through her imagination.
(Author’s note: this landed in the trashcan after about two days of wear, via hand-me-down pile).
That’s what it always is, of course. Princesses or frills are reinforced—and very often co-opted—by the media (duh). For my small person with her big eyes and dainty spins, who likes to say “matam” when she means “madam,” it’s not consciously about a message from Disney or any other marketer or one of her more girly media-saturated, princess-loving pals. It’s about venturing into some larger world with her BFF. I must hold that in mind as I navigate prefab princess detritus and Dora toothbrushes and Hello Kitty bandaids, along with a healthy stock of the plain ones. My real job is to let the imagination rule.
Also: we haven’t given away the entire fleet of trucks, the Lego, the construction worker hats nor the other supposed “boy” toys. We haven’t even moved them from easy access spots in the playroom.
