Traveling to Princessland: Is the Princess Craze Third Wave Approved?

As a Feminist, I have often been a defender of some Disney Princesses like Ariel and Belle, who I feel, introduced me to feminist ideas early in life. However, even I can’t get behind the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique highlighted by Judy Dutton in Airtran’s GO magazine this month. On my flight home from visiting my mom, I was intrigued by the article titled “The Princess Complex,” but ended up mortified and frustrated.

The article focuses on various pampering opportunities for children when they travel with a focus on the Disney boutique. This opportunity to “transform” young daughters into princesses includes using the “magic of hair extensions,” make up, accessories, and of course the princess outfit complete with heels (34). While a mother describing her daughter’s hair as “mousy” and encouraging strangers to heavily makeover her 3-year-old child is worrisome, this was not the part that stuck out to me the most. There are three points of this article that I found highly problematic—Dutton’s use of feminism to justify these toddler makeovers, the author’s own conversion to “Princessland,” and the stereotypically gendered princess lessons.

Dutton has moments where she is clearly conflicted with these princess centered activities, but validates the makeover early on by essentially laying some of the blame on third-wave feminism, “Reasons for this royal craze range from Disney’s marketing ingenuity to third-wave feminists insisting girls can be pretty and powerful to parents’ desire for ‘safe’ role models in a unsafe world” (37). While one of the facets of the third-wave is a more nuanced look at the performance of gender (including wearing make-up), I feel confident that the third wave contributions of intersectionality, multiplicity of identity, and a broader definition of gender were not intended to encourage young girls to engage in privilege laden act of socially constructed self-beautification. Not to mention that there are plenty of safe role models beyond Disney, like Hilary Clinton, Alice Paul, Rosa Parks, and the multitude of other women that have made amazing contributions to the world throughout history. So why are moms still supporting this princess craze?

                          Before Boutique                After Boutique

Just as young daughters get carried away in the fairytale mythology, so do some of the moms. Dutton explains this as her daughter excitedly waits to see Cinderella:

In spite of my qualms with fairytales’ wait-for-the-prince-and-everything-will-be-fine credo, I find myself entranced as I watch this seminal meeting unfold…The moment, I grudgingly admit, is magical for my daughter—and I’d be lying if I didn’t confess to a contact high myself. (37)

It was when I read this point that I remembered my own conversion to Brideland only months ago. In her 1994 article “Brideland,” Naomi Wolf describes the magnetic pull of the fairytale princess wedding and its ability to supersede feminist sensibilities or logical thought. Despite her repugnant feelings on weddings, she describes the eerie ease with which her conversion into the eager bride took place—a conversion I myself had to negotiate. When I read Dutton’s description of her “contact high,” I couldn’t help but see the similarities between what I now think of as Princessland to Brideland. Wolf describes how the fantastic elements and feelings of nostalgia enable a feminist to rationalize buying a dress reminiscent of Victorian times or even making extraordinary demands based on feelings of self-entitlement. Is this the same thing that happens in Princessland? Do you see your daughters’ clear elation and the general splendor of the fantasy environment and later rationalize it with your feminism? If Brideland is any indication of the power of gendered traditions, then the pull of Princessland land can’t be ignored and may even be a precursor to Brideland. More importantly, how does the conversion to Princessland prime youth, and potentially parents, to accept gendered lessons on behavior?

Reacting to her daughter’s excitement at meeting her “BFF” Cinderella, Dutton and her partner organize another princess meet up for her daughter. At this Epcot dinner, Dutton asks if the princesses can give her daughter some advice:

I ask if she has any life advice for my little princess. “Yes,” Cinderella says. “Always be home before midnight” (a lesson I [Dutton] enthusiastically endorse). Ariel from The Little Mermaid advises Indiana to “practice your singing and swimming.” Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Belle from Beauty and the Beast all urge her to hold out for true love. (37)

My own love for Ariel and Belle led to vocal response of Oh My Dear God (to the confusion of the man sitting next to me on the plane) upon reading this section. Really Disney?!? You couldn’t think of better advice then to pursue socially sanctioned feminine activities and abstinence until prince charming comes along? So lets break this down—girls need to be home before midnight for their own protection, girls improve themselves through artistic pursuits and exercise, and girls must maintain their purity. What’s so frustrating about this to me is that Ariel could have said, “Be Adventurous” and Belle could have said, “Make sure you read and focus on school first.” This becomes even more upsetting when you remember that prior to this conversation, Dutton’s young daughter was thoroughly primed to listen to anything and everything her “safe” role models had to say. At the age of 3, Dutton’s daughter is already being taught the social “value” of self-beautification and the notion of staying “pure.” Furthermore, Dutton has negotiated this by saying that third-wave basically made this okay.

So what do we do with this as feminists? In terms of child travel options, Disney is still a top choice, despite the company’s role in supporting unfriendly policies for working families. As Dutton herself points out, her daughter is “one of thousands” of kids participating in the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique (37). So, how do we still travel to Disney without girls seeing princess everywhere they go? I remember that when I as young and going to Disney (as a native Floridian we went to Disney often) the princess focus just didn’t seem to be there in the same way. I remember begging my mom for 101 Dalmatian toys and gigantic lollipops, not a princess tiara. Any suggestions feminist travel moms?

Global Families: How these parents show their autistic kids the world

I am snowed in from work today and started exploring some articles about how families travel. I currently work with families and I noticed something very interesting about the ways our moms view travel. While finance plays a factor, it's often the belief that their children prevent them from having mobility. These are of course real barriers, so I decided to try and find out how other families do it.

To that effect, I have been trying to find resources and narratives by parents who travel with their children - especially young children. In my research, I found this fantastic article highlighted on MomsRising.org a couple of months ago titled "Traveling With an Autistic Child in Holland, Italy, France..." about two parents who have chosen, rather unconventionally, to travel the world with their autistic son. It is a fantastic piece and I highly recommend it! Please make sure to check our the links provided in the article.

When thinking about traveling with your kids, a good place to start is to see how other families have done it. In addition to the info above, Circle of Moms have a list of travel blogs written by parents.  Some of the parents have small children while others focus on going abroad with teens. There are families of various sizes and perspectives, so if your a parent who wants to travel, you have a lot of options for insight and guidance. You can even follow some of these bloggers on facebook (ex: TravelingTek) to get additional tips.

Moving Moms

"She [Buchi Emecheta] writes her novel in bits and pieces while her children are still asleep or not so quietly playing" - Alice Walker

Alice Walker’s essay “A Writer Because of, Not in Spite of, Her Children” from her collection In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens considers the relationship between children and women’s ability to write or work. She describes how she had trouble understanding Buchi Emecheta’s dedication in her novel Second Class Citizen: 

“To my dear children, Florence, Sylvester, Christy and Alice, without whose sweet background noises this book would not have been written” (67).

I admit that like Walker I have trouble understanding the idea that a child’s “noises” would facilitate the writing process. Children are often socially viewed as a heavy responsibility in which mother’s must sacrifice themselves and their dreams for their children, and by extension experience a loss of self. A women’s identity becomes “mother” and little else as all other identity markers become connected to motherhood (working mom, soccer mom, super mom, etc.). Despite having read Walker’s article years ago, I admit that I still had trouble viewing motherhood separate from terms of self-sacrifice. I didn’t really believe that mother’s could be mothers and still follow creative pursuits—let alone vigorously travel. That's changed though. For some time now I've been working almost exclusively with mothers in the mentoring program I manage. During our events, I've seen our their capacity to work while their children gurgle, fuss, play, and even scream. Just the other night at one of our evening events, after an entire day of working and coming home to a fussy child, this mother managed to still complete our creative writing project while simultaneously caring for her son. Not only did she complete the assignment, but also managed to engage her peers I detailed critical thought. It was an amalgamation of these thoughts, readings, and interactions that made me so thrilled when I saw a considerable amount of stories by women traveling abroad with their children.

In Laura Fokkena’s essay “Watching Them Grow Up” she discusses how having a child changed the way she traveled in Egypt: “Despite my marriage to Bassel, an Egyptian I’d met during my first trip, my status as a khawagayya (a foreigner) had always superseded any other claim I might make about my identity. This time, my American passport was secondary. My main role was that of wife, young mother, and grieving daughter-in-law” (121). The role of mother to an Egyptian child enriches Fokkena’s experience in Cairo. While she is still an outsider in many ways, having her daughter grants her privileges in a society that values her first as a mother. More importantly however, in traveling with her daughter the author is asked to re-imagine motherhood and the role children play in the lives of adults. At one point, Fokkena insists they should move into their own place since they are staying in Egypt for a while longer. Her husband resists, but she maintains that Rakaya is a burden on the older women of the family. What she comes to understand though is Egyptian views on children differ from her own American perspective: “Children keep you company. They’re not a burden. All of my husband’s female relatives were professionals, but work was secondary to their duties as daughter, mother, sister, wife. The same was true for men…” (128). The roles of women mesh together as opposed to compete against each other.

http://www.hipmama.com/

It’s essential to consider though that these roles can be fluidly integrated because parenting is the responsibility of the community and not just the father and the mother. Instead of a mother having the “double shift,” all the women and men share in the responsibility at various levels: “In Egypt, taking care of the baby was a shared endeavor. Auntie Zuzu encouraged me to use my newfound free time to study, and I did. Despite all the upheaval, I managed to finish two research projects…” (126). Traveling with her daughter becomes an experience of self-reflection, growth, and allows Fakkema to see the value of a community of women. In the end, her daughter doesn’t keep her from traveling or working, but in fact enables her to have a more complex and rich experience in Egypt.

In her essay “Conversation’s in Denmark,” Lesley-Ann Brown (like Fakkema) describes how traveling with her son enables her participation in a community of mothers. Brown starts by describing how the racial tensions in Denmark make her feel uncomfortable as an African American woman, but she connects to a group of women (some Denmark natives and other’s are not) whose discussions range from race relations in Denmark, parenting in America versus parenting in Denmark, universal healthcare, gender roles, and more. Brown suggests that had it not been for her son and the mothers, she would have had difficulty navigating Danish culture. Like Fokkena, she also describes how childcare is more of a community effort: “When I first arrived, she [friend] was always there to take me around the city, and when I was pregnant, she used to accompany me to the doctor when Benjamin was unable to. She even baby-sat Kai so that I could write” (256). Again, in this instance, having a child while traveling improves the experience as opposed to preventing her ability to travel.

Lesley-Ann Brown's Blog 

This is what I most enjoy about these essays—they provide an alternative view to the responsibilities of parenting from the normative conversations about motherhood. They help the reader view motherhood as a role that not only enhances ones life, but also encourages spaces of feminist discourse and collaborative communities of women. These women don’t travel despite their children, but with their children.