This whole pretty thing, it’s really confusing to me. Here I am, mama to a very pretty (oh, of course I think that, but besides what I think, it seems to be echoed constantly by others without the same level of investment) two year-old girl. Despite the fact that she’s scrappy, really she is, she’s also petite and has long, dark, silky hair. Her face has delicate features. She smiles big and wide and frequently. She’s happy and more than anything her delight with her days shines right through.
We dress her in a lot of hand-me-downs, from her friend Amartya, who is three, and from her bigger brothers. Her attire is sometimes blue, sometimes pink, and she wears both leggings or pants and dresses and skirts (skiwts, as she says). She wears sneakers and her big brother’s discarded (too small for him) Crocs (notably too large for her). This past weekend, at a neighborhood tag sale, she found a pair of plastic Disney princess sandals (plastic), also way too large, and she would not take them off. Oh, don’t ask me which princess, because I cannot tell you. On the playground this morning, she announced, “These are my pretty shoes.” Clearly, she loves them. So, this is really my holycowmygirl’sintopretty moment. And I am officially a bit freaked out.
Not because I’m really scared of a pair of lavender sandals and not because I’m terrified that we’ll be somehow struggling over princesses (we won’t; I’ll be more live-and-let-live than I want to be and we’ll all be the better for it). Honestly, what scares me the most is that I can’t stave off the bigger stuff, the way everyone (even me, when I’m just admiring her) focuses upon the pretty and how then she hears all that pretty-talk all the time (well, frequently). Sure, we talk—a lot, I promise you, much more than the pretty—about how smart she is and how funny and how fearless and feisty and coordinated. The rest of the world, though, the people she meets just once or twice, they focus on the pretty. And the other part that gives me big pause? It’s that I care a lick about pretty. For example, I haven’t bought her many clothes (I really don’t need to with all the clothes coming my way) but the ones I’ve gotten her (see picture, for example), I really do adore. And to be sure, I totally love many of the things I’ve gotten for my boys, but I cannot honestly tell you it feels the same, that part, the dressing this adorable girl. It is like dressing a doll. And I do enjoy it.
That’s my true confession of the day, brought to you by unnamed Disney princess sandals. Please don’t tell me I’ll be at the American Girl store any time in the future. Because I won’t believe you: I’ll just put my fingers in my ears and sing, La-la-la-la-la. Really, that’s what I’ll do.
