let her wear the dress

My daughter Marley, also known as Bean, is three years old and, as befits her demographic, admires princesses.  She believes that she is a princess - as long as she's wearing a dress or a nightie.  (She also wants to be a "ballet-er" and a pirate, simultaneously, when she grows up.)  She believes that dresses are necessary for dancing and especially for twirling.  And because of this dress obsession, she insists on stripping as soon as we get home from school or our errands so that she can change into a nightie, which she wears for the rest of the day like a depressed housewife.  She's not depressed, though.  She's a feisty little girl who wants to do things herself, perfectly, and she insists on this especially when it's inconvenient.  Like after preschool pick-up, when I'm standing in the road beside an open car door in twenty degree weather while cars whiz past, so that she can buckle the top part of her car seat.  Or when we're about to leave for school, already late, and she suddenly realizes that she's not wearing what she had envisioned and falls sobbing onto the floor, pleading for me to "Change your mind!" while I try to hustle her out the door regardless, her sister Rudy in the infant car seat slung over my elbow.  I love that Marley kid, but the dress thing is just part of a larger situation involving the Disney Princesses, and those girls drive me bananas.  

The ubiquitous merchandising of Disney Princesses is both distressing and hilarious.  There are princess sandwich bags and princess gummies, and in the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that both of these things have been in my home.  Today Marley brought one of her Cinderella books to show and tell.  She chose it while I was, as usual, trying to hustle her out the door: "Disney Princesses: My Perfect Wedding."  I'm pretty sure I bought it for her at the start of her Cinderella obsession because I'm her mom and I love her and I want her to be happy.  I'm also pretty sure that little girls reading books about weddings, especially perfect ones, goes against most things that I believe in, as a mom and as a Smith College alumna.  But that's what she wanted to hold up during circle time, and one other thing I believe in is letting Marley and Rudy be who they are, so into the backpack it went.  And she was wearing her red velvet dress, too.  My princess.