Pretty, Pretty Princess

Ever since I wrote yesterday about the Tiny Tornado and her love of all things culturally coded "boy," I'm been thinking about the girls who love the things coded "girl." I like these girls, too, and I want to be careful that, when we're cheering the Tiny Tornado on as she engages the world in what is obviously a very self-directed and awesome way, we're not inadvertently dismissing kids whose awesomeness doesn't cut across the grain. Those of us who are nonconforming in some significant way love to see nonconforming kids letting their freak flag fly, especially if we weren't able to fly ours.

But sometimes we carelessly talk as if kids who clearly identify as "boy" or "girl," or whose dress is comfortably within the limits of what is culturally approved, are not also exercising their preferences. As if the only reason a girl could love princesses is because she's a weak-headed dupe of the patriarchy.

It's important to remember that the limits of what is culturally approved actually encompass a lot of variation. Sometimes it's relatively sublte. Word Boy and the Lego Savant are both pretty much "typical" boys, and they both dress in a fairly standard boy-style costume of t-shirts and cargo pants or sweats. But the Lego Savant has a strong preference for solid, dark colors--he wears a lot of black t-shirts. If they have any design on them, it's probably a skull. Word Boy likes stripes. He has a lot of navy blue t-shirts with red or light blue or gray or maroon stripes. Neither of them is very athletic, but their friend A--also a "typical" boy--is. He is athletically talented and self-confident to the point of boldness. I can remember watching a bunch of kids run across a field when A and the Lego Savant were preschoolers, and just watching them run randomly around, you could see A's talent in his grace, his form, his speed. He just didn't run the same way the other little kids ran.

My point is that even a homogenous-seeming group of "typical boys" will have a lot of variation.

And when you get to the girls--whoa nelly! There are a number of girls in the Tiny Tornado's preschool class, who dress in conventional girl ways. But they don't really dress alike. There is one girl who likes nice dresses; she often shows up in a green velvety number with a satin sash. There are a couple of girls who have that "young fashion designer" vibe going--they're putting together funky and unexpected combinations of striped tights, bright colored skirts, shirts in colors that clash just a little bit. One of the girls likes to have interesting things on her head: sparkly head bands, heart-shaped doodle boppers. And there are several girls who always or nearly always, so far as I can tell, wear pants.

My best friends have a 5-year-old girl who will only ever wear dresses, and usually dressy ones rather than casual. One of her moms told me one time, "I just walk into the store and ask if they have anything glamorous in a size 5." She is the girliest girl that ever girled a girl (and, as an aside, though in general we find it appalling when people sexualize kids by talking about their "boyfriends" and "girlfriends," my friend and I cannot resist, when the Tiny Tornado and the Glamour Girl are playing together, characterizing them as the world's tiniest and most adorable butch-femme couple. Goddess forgive us).

My point is: these girls are not dupes. They are not weak. Unless their clothing choices are being coerced by their parents, which I know happens but I hope is rare, they are exercising their preferences just as much as the Tiny Torndao is. The Tiny Tornado isn't the only little kid with agency just because her agency is so visible in her unconventional choices. She didn't corner the market on preschool awesome. There's plenty of it to go around, and that long-haired girl with the Hello Kitty t-shirt and the twirly skirt and the shiny shoes by God got her share of it, and is putting it to work.