Being a Princess is About Who You Are, Not What You Wear

I am proud to call myself a feminist, and don't think it conflicts with my other identities or belief systems. I don't think being a feminist means rejecting femininity, or believing men and women are the same. What it does mean to me is that women and men are equals; I think it's progress that American women have equal rights politically, educationally and economically. Despite the rise of feminism and the ideal of social equality between men and women, American culture today for little boys and girls is extremely gendered, and our household is confronting a princess craze.

I embrace the desire for girls to play dress up and think that imaginative play is an awesome thing for a child. I have fond memories of playing dress up myself with my lifelong friend, Elana. Her mother's closet was full of exciting things to try on, and we would prance around to show off our fashion ensembles. What concerns me, though, is the idea that being "the fairest of them all" is what matters in life, and a little girl's external appearance is what defines her beauty. The contemporary little girl princess culture emphasizes an ideal princess-perfect outward appearance. It's not only American women who are objectified, but American little girls.

Lydia has only ever even seen one princess movie, "Cinderella." And when she watched it, I was careful to talk with her about how kind Cinderella was, even when her step-sisters were cruel to her. We talked about Cinderella's character traits, and how beautiful she was on the inside. We discussed that what made her step-sisters ugly was their meanness. On our bookshelf, we have no traditional princess tales. We have lots of alternative princess stories that turn the stereotypes on their heads, like "Princess Pigsty" and "The Princess and the Pizza." We recently got a new book in this genre - "Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots?" - that emphasizes that being a princess has nothing to do with what a girl wears. Whenever Lydia insists she wants to wear a "ball gown" (or a crown, or fancy shoes) because she wants to be a princess, I tell her, "Being a princess is about who you are, not what you wear." Yet the message seems to fall on deaf ears.

Evidence: see a picture of a potato head that Lydia assembled. She said she wanted to build a "princess" potato head. I watched her select the cherry red lips with perfect smile, the eyes with pink lush lashes, and the pointed purple shoes. I recently built a castle out of Duplos and proudly displayed it to Lydia, highlighting all its awesome features. When I pointed out the castle's princess, she said, "That's not a princess. She's wearing overalls." She saw me getting undressed one evening and pointed to my silky pink underwear, exclaiming, "You're a princess, mommy!"

I wonder to myself, if I'm trying so hard to send Lydia the message that being a princess is about who you are, not what you wear, how does she have such a clear concept of a princess as a girl with an ultra-feminine appearance, perfect features, makeup, and ideally clad in a sparkly gown enhanced with layers of crinoline? We hardly watch television in our house (no cable!), she's seen only one Disney princess movie, I don't wear any makeup, and we don't read traditional princess stories. I recently read Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein, which is an interesting book for parents with daughters. She details the rise of the Disney Princess product line, which didn't exist until 2000. A marketing executive went to a "Disney on Ice" show where he saw lots of little girls wearing handmade princess costumes, and realized Disney had a huge branding opportunity. Thus, the Disney Princess craze was born. And other toy manufacturers followed suit. Now we can purchase princess everything - bedding, costumes, lamps, hairbrushes, etc. Toys are divided into pink and blue to an extent I never encountered as a child. Even once gender-neutral toys like a popper are color-coded blue or pink. If one so much as takes her daughter on errands to the local grocery or big-box store, she'll be exposed to plenty of princess gear. Our daughters were surrounded by pink, ultra-feminine goods as soon as we shared the news, "it's a girl!"

And what is the message of that culture? That being pretty by wearing beautiful gowns is what will get you attention as a girl in this world. When Lydia wears her "princess ball gown" out and about, she gets tons of attention. Recently, she wore it on an errand and as we walked into a store, a random woman stopped her car, rolled down her window, and said, "I LOVE HER OUTFIT!" How can I blame Lydia for wanting to wear these outfits when she garners such praise and adoration while wearing them? I fear that already at the age of two she's concluded a woman's power is in her ability to look outwardly beautiful.

I know it's an age-old problem for women to struggle with social pressure to be beautiful on the outside. This is where the "fairest of them all" princess stories come from, after all. Yet, thanks to the feminist movement, our girls are (rightly) being told that they can follow their dreams and forge the path they want to regardless of their sex. I imagine there will be some cognitive dissonance for our daughters who hear they can pursue any dream, while being made to feel that their success is really determined by their conformity to traditional norms of feminine beauty.

Jeff pointed out to me that we, too, tell Lydia how beautiful she is. I love the outfits that she puts together - especially the wild ones! And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I'm trying to be better about telling her she's beautiful no matter what she wears. I tell her she's beautiful when she does something generous, like when she brings a toy to her fussy sister. I'm hoping that by reminding her, "being a princess is about who you are, not what you wear," my dream for her to grow up as a loving, self-assured woman will be a reality, rather than just another fairy tale.

I Quit the Gym

It may seem like quitting the gym has little to do with identity or motherhood. But for me, not so. For many years, my identity was wrapped up in running. To give a sense of my level of commitment, in high school when I began long-distance running, a non-runner friend referred to my long-distance track teammates as a cult.

I was never a natural distance runner, and only through disciplined training combined with good coaching did I become pretty good at cross country in my early college years. I ran both cross country and track my freshman year of college, which is the time most college kids away from home form their lasting friendships. My freshman year, almost all of my free time outside of studying and attending classes was devoted to training or competing. I ate dinner every night with the team, since dinner followed practice. As a result, the majority of my friendships were forged with other long-distance runners. A month before the beginning of track season in the winter of my sophomore year, I injured my foot - I succumbed to an "over-use injury." It was so painful that I could not put any pressure on my foot for weeks. I initially was in denial that I might not be able to run track in a few months, killing myself swimming for hours to stay in cardiovascular shape. When the injury wasn't healing, my orthopedic doctor asked if I felt any pain when I swam. I told him yes, every time I pushed off the wall with my foot I felt the pain. He prescribed total rest - no working out at all. It was then that I had to face reality: my core identity was rooted in working out. I didn't know who I was if I wasn't a runner. My friends from the cross country team no longer ate dinner with me, and every one of those friendships faded away as I was no longer a part of team training and activities. I realized how grateful I was for the handful of friends from my dorm and classes, who loved me despite my addiction to running, not because of it. When I finally healed, I did go back to running, but vowed never to let it define me again.

Road race with my graduate school workout buddy
(and awesome mommy), Michelle Allendoerfer!

Yet, it remained an exhilarating hobby. When I graduated college and took a job in New York City, I was awed every morning by the beauty of watching the sun rise over the Twin Towers as I jogged through Pier A Park in Hoboken. A few years later when I moved to Japan, I found peace in my quiet runs every morning along the Tokyo Olympic Park jogging path a mile from my apartment. It was a daily escape in a city that normally is nothing but hustle and bustle. In graduate school, exercise was my stress relief - when I wasn't teaching, reading or doing statistics problem sets, I was working out with my buddy Michelle. We laughed and we sweated together. I lost her as my gym buddy when she had kids, but around that same time, I got married and Jeff became my gym buddy. We discovered spinning together, and took this killer class several times a week taught by an amazing instructor, Beth. It was a fun part of our relationship to work out together - the mean girls-like clique at our gym sarcastically referred to us as "the happy couple." Even when I got pregnant, I continued to work out 5 days a week; between yoga, spinning and weightlifting, I was determined to be a powerful mama. I remember spinning in my second trimester of my pregnancy with Lydia, while Beth berated Jeff (she loves to harass the men in her classes) for not working as hard as his pregnant wife. In my first experience of labor, when contractions lasted for several minutes, I would envision the painful isolation drills we did in Beth's class, and told myself that I had already demonstrated I could do anything physically for a minute or two.

Despite my determination after my injury in college not to root my identity in exercise, after having kids, I was soon to realize that I had a hard time accepting I was no longer hardcore (literally and figuratively). After having Lydia, I only made it to the gym twice a week, if I was lucky. Jeff and I didn't want to leave Lydia in gym daycare after being apart from her all day at work, which made it impossible to go together. We took turns going to the gym, and I had to coordinate workout times around baby feeding times, which was often stressful and meant I had to leave classes early. When we had Anna, it became even more challenging. To get to spinning classes at the gym in enough time to guarantee a spot, I would have had to arrive a half an hour early. This was not just logistically challenging with unpredictable infant napping and feeding times, but undesirable - I don't want to spend two hours at the gym on a weeknight or weekend when I have two adorable kids who I'd much rather spend that quality time with. A few weeks ago, I got turned away from a spinning class for the third week in a row because I didn't arrive early enough to reserve a bike. And that was it - I decided to quit the gym.

"Exercising" at home with Lydia (and
Anna in utero).

I've had to face my identity issues as a result. I've had to accept I no longer have six-pack abs and awesome upper body strength. And not only because of working out less, but because pregnancy tears one's body up, literally. My abdominal muscles separated in both pregnancies, and in my attempt to be hardcore working out while pregnant with Anna, I pulled my round ligament. It was kind of comical because I pulled it doing lunges at the gym and suddenly found I could not walk. Picture a pregnant woman gripping her belly while holding on to the wall for assistance walking towards the exit, and you can imagine the attention I got from fellow gym goers!

I'm asking myself, why was I pushing myself to do intense workouts while pregnant? Why was it so hard for me to bite the bullet and quit the gym, when it wasn't working for our family? Upon self-reflection, one reason is that I like to think of myself as tough. A strong woman. One of my favorite poems by Marge Piercy is entitled "For Strong Women" (in her awesome book The Moon is always Female) and I think I've always associated physical strength with being an independent, secure woman. Another reason, I believe, is the insane expectation fueled by tabloid media to get back in shape after having a baby. I don't read or watch the gossip news, but I do our family's grocery shopping, and all I have to do is walk out the check out aisle to feel ashamed as a woman for not losing my baby weight. While pregnant with Anna, I saw Jessica Simpson taunted with unflattering pictures on magazine covers lamenting her pregnancy weight gain and failure to lose it, and right after I gave birth to Lydia the tabloids were abuzz with Gisele Bundchen's return to the catwalk just months after having her baby. The message to women is clear - you are a failure if you don't almost immediately get back into physical shape after having a child, pulled round ligaments and torn abdominal muscles be damned. Nevermind that women who've just given birth have a new infant to care for, are often getting 3 hours of sleep a night, baby feeding every few hours, potentially trying to care for older children, and are working (at home and/or outside the home). I'm guessing unlike the majority of us, Gisele probably had a personal chef, a personal trainer, a personal assistant, a house cleaning service, and at least one nanny to support her in making time to work out.

I'm trying to let go of my self-image as a physically tough woman, and remind myself what Piercy saw as true strength in a woman. "A strong woman is a woman who craves love like oxygen or she turns blue choking. A strong woman is a woman who loves strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong in words, in action, in connection, in feeling; she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf suckling her young."