It's a GIRL! Blog Book Tour

As with It's a Boy, and Literary Mama, Andi has put together a collection of essays perfect for reflection on our lives as mothers and quick reading in the bathroom little chunks of time. I even love the cover of It's a Girl: a little girl in a tutu, wearing untied sneakers and carrying a basketball. It's the kind of femininity I like to promote to my girls: wearing a dress and getting dirty need not be mutually exclusive. It's possible to be both feminine and tough.

Today Andi is blogging about Kim Fisher's "Shining Shimmering Splendid", about her triplets and their princess power. Kim Fisher is also a neighobor of mine, so I've seen her triplets playing out on the street in their dress-ups many times. They are fabulous.

The Disney princesses make me uneasy. Naomi has her own fixation with Belle and Ariel and her own basket of princess themed dress-ups. Yesterday, when making wishes with dandelion fuzz, she said "I wish ...to marry...a prince!" Ugh. My mom thought it was funny. I did not.

I am hoping to hook some other association to the princess with the powerful, heroic princesses of Miyazaki*. Princess Nausicaa brokers peace between warring species, all while flying through the air on a glider. Princess Mononoke savagely defends nature from human invasion. They are the absolute inverse of the Disney falling in love in a pretty dress mold.

It's amazing what little girls can do: they can turn the Disney Princesses into something powerful, as in Kim's essay. I will remember that when Naomi hikes up her Belle dress to chase a soccer ball barefoot across her cousin's backyard. Princesses don't have to be weak.

*Just a warning: Miyazaki's movies tend to be a little scary.

Comments

[Lilian]

Hey, when my son was born and I had to get other grad students to substitute for me for a while, I scheduled Nausicaa (the first book or the series, I think) for my students to read, since it was the request of my friend Enrique who was substituting - I didn't get to teach it, but I read it and graded the papers my students wrote about it. He also showed Princess Mononoke to the class! (I haven't seen all of it, though - you're right, these movies are kind of scary, even for me!).

[Kirsty]

I've been trying to reclaim the Princess stereotype a bit for myself lately. It's something that gets very ingrained but you can either choose to let it make you powerful or powerless. Needless to say, I'm more interested in exploring the former.

[Sally]

Have you seen the picture book called The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch? My 2 year old boy loves it. It's a gently feminist twist on the classic princess/prince/dragon tale. Actually, my little guy just likes the dragon, but I'm sure he's internalizeing the idea that princesses can be tough and will tell off the royal bum of a prince if he's not nice in the end.

[Sheena]

Girls looks beautiful in flower girl dresses they looks pretty and the the dress are beautiful.
http://www.flowergirldressforless.com/

[flower girl dress for less]

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