Barbie invades conscious family’s home in the wilderness

It happened. Today, my 3 year old daughter asked me to pretend that she was “Barbie”.

We were listening to Dan Zanes and she began to dance around. Mid-twirl, she paused to look me in the eye and say, “Mommy, pretend you are the author of this song and tell me a story about it.” My mind churned momentarily to catch up with her and I began, “My name is Dan Zanes and I wrote this song one day while riding on top of pile of pumpkins in the back of a pick-up truck. I started thinking about my old friend and decided to write her a letter. This friend of mine…” and then was interrupted in the midst of my monologue. “Now, mommy, pretend that I’m Barbie,” she dared. Something inside my body fell clunckily down several floors. It felt like maybe my thymus had fallen down some cavernous elevator shaft and turned to stone on the way down. “MOMMY!! Please, pretend that I am Barbie,” she urged in frustration at my lack of response. “Barbie?,” I asked, “Who is Barbie?”. Still twirling and extending arm after arm in lovely interpretive response to the music she answered, “Barbie is a princess.” “Oh!”, I exclaimed. Barbie and princess had invaded my intentional household despite our collage supplies, book piles, building equipment, train sets, dump trucks, puppet theater, musical instruments, paint splattered easel, mini-kitchen, hot rod tricycle, kite, and wooden blocks? Despite our stance as conscientious feminist parents who approach the raising of our children as a spiritual practice?? There must have been some mix up. Barbie must be looking for a neighbor’s house or maybe she took wrong turn and ended up here in Petrolia by mistake. I’m happy to give her a one-way bus ticket out of town. Except that no buses come here. There’s not even television here. How did that blond, stereotype reinforcing, homophobic, gender-binding, helpless-seeming, appearance focused, and starving corporate mannequin get into my house out here in the wilderness??????

“Um, how about we pretend you are a firefighter, instead?” I offered. “Nooo, I want to be Barbie,” she whined mid-sashay. “Ok, I know, you could be a magical veterinarian!” I said excitedly. “NO, Barbie. I really want to be Barbie!” she replied. “Well, you could be a builder or a teacher or, I know, how about an elf!!”, I desperately suggested. The dancing stopped and she begged angrily with the hint of a developing sob, “MOMMY. I WANT TO BE BARBIE!!!! Pretend that I am BARBIE, pleeeaaasseee.” I saw in her despair that I was compounding the BARBIE problem by committing another infraction in my ill-timed censorship and repeated rejection of fantastic her creative impulse to create a story. We could talk about Barbie after the dance-story. “Ok,” I relented. “How do we do that?”, I inquired. Ecstatic and dancing bigger now than before, she stammered, “Mommy, say ‘Everyone, no matter how big or how small, can make a difference for this kingdom!” I did as I was told and her dancing magnified and her little face was so focused on seriously painting out the story with her body. “Ok mommy, now tell a story about that,” she instructed. I told stories about how Barbie and her friends took on the challenge of a dragon who was intimidating people and how Barbie was so strong and such a great horseback rider and how she built her own house and read lots of books and was kind. This went on for some time. There were pauses so that Ossian could give me more direction for the stories and also to do some choreography for her one-year old sister and her thirty-six year old mother. We had lots of costume changes as well. She was in heaven.

I still don’t know where she heard of Barbie. When I asked her, she said “Michael”. That is a boy at preschool she talks about multiple times each day and has done so for nearly 8 months.

I felt totally defeated and scared and sad when Barbie invaded. I knew we’d run into each other at some point in this child-rearing safari but I NEVER thought it would be at the nascent age of 3. My child is in the world and it is inspiring and awesome and even devastating sometimes, too.

nola jams

Nola loves to play her tiny piano… she’ll do it for a long time. I can almost finish debriding a heaping sinkful of crusty dishes before she finishes a little recital. Check out the video for a sample.

Yesterday, Ossian picked up Bird By Bird, written by Anne Lamott, settled into a cozy valley between laundry pile ranges and announced that she “just wants to read this book for a little while I think”. She then lowered her sunglasses, adopted an exaggeratedly grown-up thinking expression and “read” this 237 page book for nearly a half hour.

This is a great book, by the way, for anyone working on the business of writing something. Though I haven’t gotten very far into the book, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of her advice to just write what you can see through a one by one picture frame in your mind. It’s a concrete method of breaking things down into writeable pieces rather than being hijacked by overwhelmedness.

I tend to read multiple books at a time and periodically I try to break myself of this tendency by getting very strict, directive, and linear – with myself. During these periods, I decide that multiple book reading is not methodical enough and that finishing one before starting another is the higher ground. Then I feel a little oppressed and slowly I stop reading altogether. Thankfully, about this time, I alway encounter someone I respect describing the 4 books they are currently nibbling at and I let go of my little fascist exercise and resume reading books again.

I just finished Obama’s auto biography, Dreams from My Father and now, in an attempt to be fair, I am reading Hillary’s, Living History. I was hoping these books would give me fuller picture of how these two potential world leaders think.. what they’ve been through, what they value, how they are motivated, etc. I want a better sense of their personal experiences and inner workings to understand what drives their political wills. I love that Obama was a driven community organizer – he’s seen and responded to the institutional injustice around race and socio-economics that is so obviously emblazoned in communities burdened by poverty. He’s been on the ground, viscerally experiencing the shortcomings, power, and need for responsible domestic policies. He has struggled with his relationship to race and has not shyed away from hard questions he’s sought to answer for himself as the nation aired its dirty racist laundry for all to see. Hilary’s story is so different, but like Obama’s, tells the story of a potent historical era. Hilary, a baby boom girl, coming of age as feminism stepped up its march. All the dreams and hopes of her mother and generations of women before her strapped on her back – all their work and suffering having paved the way for a slightly broader future for her. It reminds me of my mom and the responsibility she has carried throughout her career – early on, to prove she could do it like a man and later, to cheer lead for other women – to bring them along and now, to relax a little and find a sustainable way to balance self, career, health, politics, and baggage.

that’s just for boys..

oh the pain of motherhood.

a few times in the past week, Ossian has been playing and said things like, “but that’s just for boys” or ” only boys can play that” or “that’s a game for boys”. .. I have tried to ask her about this but her answers have been less than informative. I want to know why she’s come to think that some games are for boys and how she encountered that message.

As I often do as a mother, I deeply freaked-out internally but continued smiling and quietly nodding to ossian as she spoke during each one of these gendered proclamations. Luckily, now that she’s in preschool, we can blame a lot of things on that new institution in our lives. Don’t get me wrong, we love it, but it’s always nice to have a new scapegoat when it comes to disturbing behaviors that crop up in your child.

I asked her teachers about this today, wondering if they had seen any interactions between kids that would have conveyed these messages. Nothing came to mind for the teachers. They did report that since the rain has started, they’ve been having play time in the gym instead of on the playground. In the gym, the teachers explained, the boys, particularly the older boys, are usually on one side of the room being loud and more physically wild or active. (I am so aware just in writing this sentence about the potential for gender stereotypes even in my description, yikes!) All but one of the older kids are boys and the one older girl (in this instance, older mean more than 3 years of age, no offense to the senior readers, here) has been absent for the past week and a half. When she is present, she is able to play with the older boys. Without her, the older kid play is also exclusively boy play and these older kids tend to ignore Ossian (another gut-wrenching heart-breaker for this mom to hear) and all the younger kids at playtime. So, it is possible that Ossian has interpreted this older kid snubbing and exclusivity as a “boy thing” during this absence of the older girl member of the not-even-close-but-lets-call-it-a-clique. I’m fascinated and disturbed at the same time. Amazed that she’s noticed these groupings and that she perhaps has understood it as function of gender.

What are we to do? We teach her that she can do and be anything. We limit the pink clothing to the occassional parade of lovingly given gift outfits. We make sure there are more trucks and trains on hand than dolls and avoid all use of the “p” word (princess). We let her pee standing up like her friend Salmon Bear (a person, not a bear) when she chooses to and encourage her to wear whatever clothes in the closet that strike her fancy. Her best friends have been boys and she has spent equal time with mom and dad for the duration of her life to date. She sees mom cooking, cleaning, lifting heavy stuff, running, and chopping wood. She sees daddy do the same things. We teach her to sew and to build and to sing and to jump in puddles and play ball and run and read and do dollhouse and cook and laugh and play drums and love her sister. It’s not that I think or want to convey that men and women are the same; I’m not that type of fool. I just want her to see and believe and assume that she can do or be anything. I want to be proud of being a girl. I want her to be undaunted by isms and empowered to follow her dreams and be fully herself. Probably all of the things my parents wanted for me.

And still, I was told in countless ways that I was just a girl. For example, when I met with our high school counselor as a national honor society senior to decide whether to drop AP calculus (due to the overt sexism of the teacher who had asked all the girls in the class to drop his class in exchange for the raising of our grades – that’s another story!!! – he was later promoted to head of the math department) or stick it out despite a somewhat hostile teacher. I was worried about my standing with colleges to which I would be applying. I was interrupted mid-sentence by this male counselor who leaned forward and, putting his hand on my knee, said “Jen, you have such a pretty face. I hate to see you worrying about this. Did you know that Barbizon Modeling has a rep in the library right now? Why don’t you go on over right now and talk to her?” These things happen, and lots worse, too. Even to those of us raised by educated and passionate feminists in conscious communities of privilege. Part of the pain of parenting is accepting that you’ve brought a perfect being into a mightily imperfect world.

I will no go quietly…. AAGHGH!