Our hotel room seemed to radiate with pink glitter. The Disney World staff knew it was my daughter’s fifth birthday and that she loves everything princess, so they filled our room with princess galore. There was a Rapunzel balloon and a Little Mermaid coloring book and a Cinderella Barbie doll — as if Cinderella could get any skinnier. On the bed was a piece of paper announcing that the next day, my daughter Willa had an appointment at something called The Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. Beyond that was a giant pile of sugary confections, like a hyped-up mountain surveying the scene. I reached over and bit off the head of a chocolate Mickey.
I have been a tomboy all my life. When I played with dolls they were usually being sacrificed in some sort of erupting volcano-like mud hole in my backyard or running for their lives from monsters who had taken over my Tonka truck. I know I had some dresses. I’ve seen pictures of me wearing them, around the same age as my daughter. But I look stiff and decorated, more like a tree at Christmastime than a girl in a dress. It just wasn’t my thing.
It is, however, very much my daughter’s thing. I don’t know how it is that in the modern era, I still can’t get decent reception on my cellphone but somehow traditional gender norms are silently communicated and crystal clear. My partner and I certainly didn’t teach our daughter to like pink and ruffles and such. And I can’t fathom some genetic or biological nodule that predisposes my girl to like dolls while little boys like trucks. Baloney. But somehow, even in the midst of our hyper-liberal and hyper-diverse neighborhood with girls and boys of all kinds on display every day, it happened. Did I do something wrong? Is feminism mysteriously skipping a generation? Meanwhile, I have to bribe her to wear jeans.
People say it’s a phase and not to resist it or else Willa will just dig in longer. Which is how we found ourselves, in Disney World, at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. We wait in a large room near the foot of Cinderella’s Castle with a dozen other 5- and 6- and 7-year-olds and a frightening number of even younger girls. And one boy, a little Y chromosome ray of light amid the depressing clouds of gender stereotyping hovering in my conscience.
Eventually, a Fairy Godmother-in-Training comes to retrieve Willa. “What kind of princess would you like to be?” the Fairy Godmother-in-Training asks. Praise Merlin, another spark of hope — there are multiple kinds of princesses. Maybe she could be a pirate princess or an astronaut princess or a doctor princess. But no, the choice is merely among Cinderella or Belle or Sleeping Beauty or the rest of the Disney set. My heart sinks with my head as Willa puzzles over what is clearly the most profound decision yet in her young life.
“Cinderella,” Willa answers.
“With hair extensions?” the Fairy Godmother-in-Training follows up.
You have got to be kidding me.
Two hours later, long after the process is complete, we’re wandering around the Magic Kingdom, the polyester Cinderella dress long traded in for a tank top and shorts and the makeup — yes, makeup — smeared with ice cream. The hair extensions, blond things with blue and pink sparkles tied in the ends, now live in my backpack and creep me out every time I reach for water.
But the “glass slippers” (i.e., glittery plastic shoes) remain, Willa pounding around the theme park in them like a stubborn princess trooper. Until a strap breaks. Reluctantly, I lead us back to the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique.
“We need the Bibbidi Bobbidi cobbler,” I say to the Fairy Godmother behind the cash register. Willa’s broken shoe is whisked away to be replaced. While we’re waiting, some Fairy Godmothers gather. They ooh and aah over her hair still done up in a bun from the makeover and the glitter and eye shadow lingering on her face.
“But you’ll have to wait awhile to marry your prince,” one Fairy Godmother says to Willa.
“No,” Willa replies. “I don’t have to marry a prince if I don’t want to. I could marry another princess. Or I don’t even have to get married.”
The Fairy Godmothers-in-Training are momentarily speechless. And then, one by one, they start to applaud. One even pumps her fist in the air. Feminism didn’t skip my daughter, it was just hiding underneath all that pink and glitter.
When we get back to our hotel, the Disney World staff has left a treat for me — a silver and rhinestone tiara, size large, rested atop a velvet pillow. Willa takes off her Cinderella tiara and reaches for the new one.
“Sorry, honey,” I interject, taking the tiara in my hand. “That one’s mine.”
As I place the tiara on my head and admire myself in the mirror, I kind of get it. Not the pretty part, I still look out of place. But how proud I am of my bold and clever and creative little girl — that she’s managed to be her own person, despite society’s conventions and glitter. In that moment, I want nothing more than to be just like her, even if it means being a princess.