Princess Mania
Princesses and Vampires Have Something In Common
A Guest Blog
by Kate Stevenson
My daughter had never
cared about princesses. I had heard about it from my
friends – all their girls wanted was princess stuff -
but they were doing something wrong, clearly, and I
wasn’t. Don’t you just say “No?” I thought to myself.
Then she got the book.
It was ginormous.
It was heavy.
It was pink.
“No worries!” I thought. Her eyes lit up.
That night, we cracked it open for the first read. There were the chapters all neatly laid out with a princess head next to them. She was so overstimulated by all the hair colours that she kept jerking her head and eyes around trying to take it all in and making this nervous giggling sound. There were red ones! And black ones! And blonde ones! And they were all pretty! Finally she settled on a blonde. This turned out to be the most popular hair colour story of the next 7 days.
My husband and I exchanged nervous glances. “At least we’re reading to her in the English language and she’s learning words and that sentences go from left to right.”
I asked her one day, about 4 days in, what she wanted to wear. Before this it was always “jeans”. Or “nothing” or “underpants”. “I want to wear a pretty dress,” she said. “And tonight I want to get married to Daddy and I want you to hold my train. And I want Marie-Claire (holds up baby doll) to be my bridesmaid and I want you to help me get her dressed in this (holds up lacey scarfy thing). And I want you to listen to me sing”.
She closed her eyes and started singing and swaying. The lyrics went something like this “I want to be a princess/am a princess and get marrieeeeeeed/loooove”.
In the following days, I saw hours of running on tippy toe through the house in robes, looking over her shoulder, with a scared doe-like look in eye, crying “No! No! No!” Then suddenly stopping, looking at me from under lowered lashes and smiling like she’d never met me before. Not to mention all the curtsey practicing.
So my four-year-old is obsessed with princesses. I dunno. I say use it to your advantage. When she fell over the other day, I told her “Princesses don’t cry!” and she totally believed me. She also believed me about brussel sprouts and leeks. I say go for it. Exploit the hell out of it. Princessez rulz!
Just remember, that like vampires, once you invite a princess in to your house, you can never get rid of it.
Then she got the book.
It was ginormous.
It was heavy.
It was pink.
“No worries!” I thought. Her eyes lit up.
That night, we cracked it open for the first read. There were the chapters all neatly laid out with a princess head next to them. She was so overstimulated by all the hair colours that she kept jerking her head and eyes around trying to take it all in and making this nervous giggling sound. There were red ones! And black ones! And blonde ones! And they were all pretty! Finally she settled on a blonde. This turned out to be the most popular hair colour story of the next 7 days.
My husband and I exchanged nervous glances. “At least we’re reading to her in the English language and she’s learning words and that sentences go from left to right.”
I asked her one day, about 4 days in, what she wanted to wear. Before this it was always “jeans”. Or “nothing” or “underpants”. “I want to wear a pretty dress,” she said. “And tonight I want to get married to Daddy and I want you to hold my train. And I want Marie-Claire (holds up baby doll) to be my bridesmaid and I want you to help me get her dressed in this (holds up lacey scarfy thing). And I want you to listen to me sing”.
She closed her eyes and started singing and swaying. The lyrics went something like this “I want to be a princess/am a princess and get marrieeeeeeed/loooove”.
In the following days, I saw hours of running on tippy toe through the house in robes, looking over her shoulder, with a scared doe-like look in eye, crying “No! No! No!” Then suddenly stopping, looking at me from under lowered lashes and smiling like she’d never met me before. Not to mention all the curtsey practicing.
So my four-year-old is obsessed with princesses. I dunno. I say use it to your advantage. When she fell over the other day, I told her “Princesses don’t cry!” and she totally believed me. She also believed me about brussel sprouts and leeks. I say go for it. Exploit the hell out of it. Princessez rulz!
Just remember, that like vampires, once you invite a princess in to your house, you can never get rid of it.