Wednesday, 30 March 2011

• Getting to know Tinkerbell

  I have two daughters.  I have two girly daughters.  Anyone who knows me and my daughters has probably laughed either to himself or right out loud to my face as he considers this situation.  Because I'm not only NOT a girly girl, I have spent about 90% of my life taking great pains NOT to be a girly girl.  The things I enjoy are not the typical knitting, scrapbooking, shopping, cooking, etc.  No, I enjoy math/science or logic avenues (when I can get them at work or doing school with the girls), playing my trumpet, working with my husband on remodeling our basement, fixing things around the house and yard, or running.

  Funny things happen when you become a mom.  You learn a lot about yourself as well as your kids.  I still cringe at the continuous wedding planning that happens at our house.  Or the many, MANY babies that seem to be born to my girls.  The tea parties I have unwittingly demolished by throwing some toys back in the bin after bedtime, and the "babies" that are sleeping under anything that could remotely be construed as a blanket...  However, I've found myself guiding my daughters through this by introducing reality to their play.  Little details about weddings that they could incorporate into the game, or facts about newborns they might not know yet.  Encouraging these fantasies that I'm sure I never felt compelled to pretend when I was their age.

  But then there's Tinkerbell.  The epitome of girliness, to whom both girls developed varying degrees of obsession around age two or so.  She was/is everywhere in their room.  When we got the first (of three!) of her movies, there was a part of me that thought perhaps we were going too far in encouraging such stereotypes.  But then I sat down and watched the movie with them.  And... I was shocked.  Tinkerbell, as I should have guessed from her name, I guess, is... a tinker.

  She's an engineer.  Like me. 

  She doesn't enjoy all the "girly" jobs the other fairies do, like the garden fairies, the animal fairies.  She is, instead, good at inventing new gadgets and working with her hands to fix gadgets.  She is SO COOL!!  I love that she opens up the world of non-traditional jobs to my girls.  But I mostly love that she is the heroine of her own stories.  It's the complete antithesis to the princesses (which are another obsession...  I'm still trying to get over that one) who seem to live their lives waiting for the prince to come, but meanwhile being so innocently naive that they require forest (or sea) animals to protect them from evil. 

  I don't think of myself as a feminist, usually.  But when it comes to my girls, I hope and pray that, like Tink, they will learn practical life and people skills and have healthy and flexible expectations and ambitions, so that when they leave my house and jump into life on their own, they will be prepared to be the heroines of their own stories.

  I wonder if Tinkerbell comforters come in queen size.

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