Using the Princesses.

A little girl is cute. She looks like a living doll romping around in skirts and ponytails. One moment she is mimicking the tenderness of a mother with a baby doll in her arms. The next minute, she is upbraiding the dog for its considerable sins.

My own daughter is all too aware of the power of her cuteness. She has always been able to land herself in the lap or on the hip of a teacher. For a child of one or two years, this isn’t that big of a deal. She passed the four year mark many months ago and she still has the knack of insinuating herself into places no four-year-old should be able to go. This is partly because she is quite petite for her age, but it has more to do with the fact that she sees herself as irresistible. After all, who wouldn’t want to hold her and give her everything she asks for?

From the beginning, we have tried to keep our daughter from seeing herself as only a pretty thing. We have constantly found ways to compliment her that are not based on her appearance, but on her character. Yet, she still cannot pass a mirror without being captivated and if you don’t notice what she is wearing today she will surely bring to your attention.

Like many girls in this modern age of marketing, my daughter is obsessed with the Disney Princesses. She sleeps beneath them at night. She wears their clothes. She listens to their music. She begs to watch their movies. She wants to be like them. In her four-year-old heart, she is one of them. These are her heroes.

We have resisted this as much as we can. My wife wasn’t that kind of girl when she was little. It is hard for us to understand. Yet our own girl is exactly the kind. She loves pink and wants to be pretty all day long. How do you fight something that is so ingrained? She wants to be a princess. Of course she’s obsessed with clothes and expects to be waited on hand and foot. All she needs is a ball gown and a prince and she’ll be set for life. But, is it possible there are other lessons to be gleaned from these iconic Disney debutants?

My wife thought of it. Enlist the princesses. Recruit them to our cause. In one of those teachable moments we read about in books, she began to discuss some of the things she had noticed about the princesses with our daughter. Cinderella was kind to others and a very hard worker (that front hall blings in every scene). Belle is a big reader who makes good use of the library. Snow White was fair and took care of others. Pocahontas respected nature. Ariel saved a drowning man. Mulan was brave. (Yes, I know Mulan is not a princess, but she is female lead in a Disney animated film, therefore she qualifies in my daughter’s eyes.)

The more we talked about it the more we could draw out the virtues we wanted to teach from these heavily marketed hussies. I don’t think there is much we can do to keep my daughter from being vain. Even now, if you ask her about her modesty, she will go through her pockets, look behind her and then throw up her hands and say she hasn’t got any. She doesn’t even know the meaning of the word. Time will heal this, thought, and there really isn’t anything wrong with being pretty, which she is. But, maybe we can teach her to be a whole lot more. After all, she’s not afraid to climb a tree or brawl like an animal with her brothers. I think in her heart she’s really a warrior princess.