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Princesses

As an old-hippie mama, hearing my daughter called a princess would have evoked fighting words--or as close to fighting as hippie mamas went.  But nobody called anybody's daughters princesses back then.

Princess, in our parlance, meant entitlement, a certain self-conscious glamour, and riches, all of which were eschewed in those early feminist hippie 70s when we had our girl babies.  We wanted our girl babies to surpass us, as our mothers wanted us to do, as all mothers probably do.  We wanted our girl babies to break the molds of what girls could do and extend themselves into any profession they chose--not to but into frilly girl labels and limitations. We wanted our girls to grow into empowered women, not entitled ones.

Maybe I was one of the more strident ones.  I didn't want my daughter to have dolls, but gender neutral toys, so as not to program her for wife and mother roles exclusively.   I never bought her a baby doll or a Barbie and inwardly protested when someone gave Day a Barbie doll for a birthday present.   (It was, of course, her favorite present that year.)  I would be less strident on the doll issue today, but I'd still protest the anatomically impossible Barbie.

Motherhood was one of my favorite things to be, as it now is my daughter's, but it was the idea of programming that we young feminists regarded as suspect.  If girls were dressed as princesses or given dolls, we figured, it would limit their choices to girl-only roles.

Now, princesses are everywhere.  The tide has turned and I don't say a word against them to Elena--as she is part of the princess-loving generation--but you won't see me taking her to the Disney store to buy princess regalia.  Hippie moms turn into hippie grandmothers.