It’s alright to cry. . . .

There was a time in my life when one of my closer friends didn’t recognize me. I read Kierkegaard on purpose, considered taking on Kevin’s last name, and announced, full of warmth and peace, that Cinderella was really a story about feminine grace and strength.

To add insult to injury, I used my feminist training to back this crap up. I was “appreciating” women’s strengths by allowing their true, wimpass nature to shine through, awaiting rescue by a strong man, if only the woman is “graceful” and submissive enough to wait for it. This thinking was, to put it kindly, a misguided phase. My friend has offered to straighten me out, possibly with force, should I blather such nonsense again.

Since that time, I have become the mother of two boys. While I have strived to maintain my own values in our purchases of clothing and toys, including embracing leggings from the girls’ section (how handier could a clothing item be?) and a near ban on more freaking bulldozer shirts, I have opened my mind to toys I never would have considered when they were cute, teensy infants. This Christmas, we were blessed with a robot that shoots and then does a happy dance and slingshots. We also got cool gear toys, awesome remote control cars, a Justice League watchtower and reversible knight/king costumes. Aside from the robot, they are all toys I would have enjoyed as a child, and I imagine when we have girls visit, they will enjoy playing with them.

Had we been relegated to the “girls” section, we’d have been able choose a nonreversible princess costume to go with the knight/king deal. In the action figures section, we could choose from countless males and three female models with impossible barbie figures. In the more “crunchy” pretend section, we could choose from countless dinosaurs, knights on horseback, knights in tents, knights with swords, or a princess who. . . . stands, apparently riveted by the fascinating sparring going on betwixt the kings and knights.

In fact, the only place where the girls section is cooler than the boys section is Hanna Andersson, and I felt sadly compelled to steer Carter away from the fleece with big polka dots on it because it has a lettuce neck, and he already gets called a “girl” (horror of horrors) when he rides the bus home with his best friend (who is a girl.) Stop. My mind is already boggled.

Someone posted this article on one of my lists, summing up the princess issue. Irony of irony, one of the authors she quotes was one whom I quoted in my earlier phase.