Who's Afraid of Girly Things?

My daughter is now in her princess era. I never thought it would start this early, she only just turned 3 this year. She loves everything pink and glittery, rainbows and unicorns, dressing up and dancing in front of the mirror. If she notices someone taking a photo of her, she’ll stop whatever she was doing and start posing and making cute faces. She recently told me she “absolutely needs” a magic wand, a tiara, and butterfly wings.

My daughter won’t let anyone else pick her outfits these days, and they’re as fabulous and shiny as one possibly can be. She owns 4 different purses already and keeps asking for more. I can’t put my makeup on with her anywhere nearby, cause she’ll surely try to use some as well. “Mommy, we need to wear nice dresses so that we look pretty” is something I heard her say multiple times. Even when playing with a toy car, she will choose to do stuff like “painting the toenails at its wheels”.

I don’t know where exactly she could have picked this up

Her friends don’t seem to care this much about pink and glitter, and they definitely don’t dress like she does. Our daycare is full of beautiful neutral toys made out of natural materials, and we try to keep variety at home too. When buying clothes for her I make sure there’s a wide palette of different colors and patterns to choose from to counterbalance the shiny dresses she might get from extended family. I love gifts like this and always suggest she wears one for special occasions, but I want her to have a choice in what she puts on day to day.

We don’t have a TV that could suggest what kind of toys she should want. There are no ads in any streaming services that she has access to, and the most pink thing she watches is Peppa the Pig. And yet every time there’s a pink plastic unicorn in any shop window display, she’ll stop everything and ask me to buy one right now. I don’t know what kind of addictive stuff they must have put in these things.

I don’t even know why I’m explaining myself like this

Most boys her age that we know are as obsessed with dinosaurs and construction machines as she is with unicorns and glitter. And yet I never heard their parents say they see anything wrong about it, or that they’re somehow trying to steer them away from these things. Boys liking dinos and excavators seem fine. My daughter liking princesses and unicorns makes me feel a little bit weird.

The most stylish blond baby girl all dressed in pink and glitter, rainbows and unicorns, professionally posing for the camera

Surely it can’t be about the aesthetics itself. I was quite famous among my friends for putting glitter in pretty much everything. Some women I haven’t seen in a while told me I was an inspiration for them to go bolder with patterns, colors, and shiny eyeshadow, and were quite surprised when they saw me in a plain dress with minimal makeup. I stopped using glitter when my baby girl was tiny enough to try to eat it off the floor, but I should be able to at least appreciate it now when I see her do it? Her glittery aesthetics is less refined than what I enjoyed back in the day, but well, she’s only 3 now, and I was around 30.

Some part of it is probably about trying to avoid consumerism, which is hard to do when your child craves every pink and shiny thing that she sees. But are plastic toy dinosaurs really that much different? If she went after every wooden Montessori play kit I might at least try to tell myself that it would develop her skills and stretch her imagination, but she doesn’t. For some reason the cheap plastic stuff has much more appeal.

Maybe it’s about the other moms, and fearing I don’t live up to their standards. Two of my daughter’s best friends have successfully stuck with their wooden playthings and neutral merino sweaters, and I’m sure their moms are happy it remains that way. They’re both accomplished and successful women, and I doubt either of them would say the same about me. I wouldn’t want their judgement get in the way of our girls spending time together.

But most likely I’m the only person judging anyone here. Growing up I got to believe that intellectual achievement is the most important thing on earth, and caring about clothes or makeup will make you empty and vain. I had a hard time relating to all the other girls, having 4 bothers and working in tech certainly didn’t help with this. Writing this whole newsletter for me is a journey in learning to appreciate the typically feminine endeavors, but so far it was all about mature womanhood, grandmotherly wisdom and all of that. I never thought that girly things would be a whole different beast.

Surely there’s a reason my daughter loves things like this

I don’t really know what it is, or if it’s sophisticated enough. Knowing how things went down with my own parents growing up, I can be certain there will be many other things she’ll enjoy more than I do. Some of them are likely going to drive me nuts.

In the end it all boils down to the question: do I care more about our relationship, or about how other people might perceive me? Because if I really care about my daughter, I should be able to join her in her world and ask her to be my guide around it. For a long time I feared that other people would see me as too basic, but maybe basic isn’t really the end of the world.