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Catherine Connors is a mother, writer and recovering academic who traded the lecture hall for the playroom and discovered that university students and preschoolers have much the same attention span. She still dips her toes into academic waters by writing the occasional scholarly article about the place of motherhood in Western philosophy, but mostly now she changes diapers and wipes noses and indulges in long reflections on whether Yo Gabba Gabba is a harbinger of the decline of western civilization. Oh, and she blogs: in addition to Bad Mother blogging at BeliefNet, she is, among other things, the author of HerBadMother.com, Managing Editor of MamaPop, moderator of Her Bad Mother’s Basement, co-founder and co-editor of WeCovet, Contributing Editor at BlogHer, and (deep breath) founder of and contributor to Canada Moms Blog. And in her spare time… oh, wait. She doesn’t have spare time. But she’s okay with that.
Emilia doesn’t really care all that much about princesses. When I told her that we were going to go see Disney Princesses on Ice,* she asked, “will they be playing hockey?“
– “No, but they’ll be skating.”
“Will it be fast skating?”
– “Pretty fast.”
“Okay then.”
We brought along a Snow White costume that she inherited from a cousin, which she insisted that she was not going to wear – “Can’t I bring my witch costume? Or Buzz Lightyear?” – until we got to the show and she saw her best friend decked out in her best princess finery, at which point she decided, as I had expected, that she would be a princess, but only if she could keep her pants on underneath the dress, “because that’s where my pockets are, and I have stuff in there.”
And so she did, and it was awesome. Because she knows that being a princess is just a matter of being your own darn self, sticker-filled pockets and all.
Some might quibble with me on that point. Some might – would – say that princesses are inherently problematic, from a feminist perspective, or whatever. I’ve waffled around on those arguments myself. But then I see this…
…and listen to her explain how she likes how Ariel rescues the prince and how the girl-skaters are more fun to watch than the boy-skaters and how it was really smart of Cinderella to save her shoe and did Mulan really fight all those soldiers and did I know that the bad fairy (from Sleeping Fairy) is kind of neat because she blows stuff up with fire? and I think, whatever. Because, my girl? She gets it. And if there’s a little sparkly princess action bound up in that it, then fine.
There are worse things. And who doesn’t love a bit of sparkle?
*Disclosure: we went as guests of MomCentral Canada. Thanks, MomCentral!
