Not a Princess

My daughter (2&1/2) announced yesterday that she was a princess. This was inevitable, but I had not thought it would come so soon. I informed her that she was not and reminded her of her name. She then started singing the wheels on the bus, life moves on fast at 2. But it did make me think I need to pre think some strategies for tackling this one as it continually raises its head over the next few years. 

The timing of this comment was interesting since there is also another child born recently who will not be a princess but will most probably, though finally getting a republic is always a possibility, become a prince. I have to say that along with Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett I also feel a slight sense of relief that the royal baby is male and will not have to suffer being a princess.

Anyway in search of advice I went to twitter, and while I received some excellent suggestions much was about how to re-define or reshape what a princess is. I'm not sure I want to. I think I'd rather make being a princess an unattractive option. Also I don't want to lie to my daughter. I am not royal so she will never be a princess. I could say that princess can run around, climb trees, wear trousers, but they can't. Kate cannot wear what she wants, say what she wants, eat what she wants, yesterdays revolting issue of OK proves that. 

Also there is the danger of simply replacing one stereotype with another. I don't know if my daughter will enjoy climbing trees yet and I don't want her confronted with the options of pink princess or 'tom boy' princess. I'd rather she could just be her in any combination of interests and abilities she enjoys. 

It is not just the gender stereotyping of princess that I find so difficult but also the inherent hierarchy we cannot all be princess. As much as I love Brave and watch it with my little one repeatedly I'd much rather it ended with the king abdicating and setting up a democratic co-operative community. 

There is too much, competition, I'm the best, look at me, in children's media and for girls princess seems to be the ultimate expression of that. Princess also teaches our daughters to place the highest value in their appearance to the exclusion of other attributes. And not their appearance for their own enjoyment creativity or self expression, their appearance as measured by how sexually attractive they are to adult men. Which is why I would rather expose princess for what they really are (slowly and in an age appropriate way) than redefine princess as something a little more diverse. 

It's going to be hard work.

Two Books on Women

 

I recently read 'How to be a Woman' by Caitlin Moran followed fairly immediately by 'A year of Biblical Womanhood' by Rachel Held Evans. I'm glad I read them this way round! It struck me that there were some interesting differences and notable contrasts that I wanted to share with the world.

I think I might start backwards. Both authors conclude that there is not and shouldn't be a prescribed way to be a woman. For Evans book this felt like the natural conclusion to her discussion. I felt the narrative learnt from the experience of other women from a diversity of cultural experiences and approached such learning with a humble heart. Yet it stayed authentically itself and gave me as the reader permission to do so as well.

Moran's book however irritated me most of the way through. It was essentially an autobiography but despite it's beginning and conclusion about the diversity of female experience I couldn't help but feel I was being told that this was or should have been my experience as well. Especially the stuff around adolescents. 

Both books reference other women who have fought similar battles before and have begun to forge a way and in who's path we follow as well as contemporaries. Evan's does so with great respect and gratitude to those 'Women of Valour' both past and present. One of her final resolutions is to identify and praise women of valor. 

Moran by contrasts dismisses most of her contemporaries, including Object and even Greer as having become irrelevant.  The only woman who comes of relatively well is Lady Gaga.  While Evans writing humbly acknowledge's the work of those who have gone before. Moran writes 'When Simone de Beauvoir wrote one is note born a woman one becomes a woman - she didn't know the half of it.' Hmm.

Moran repeatedly says that woman have done very little (even nothing) over the last 100,000 years, while men she claims have made great achievements in science, art politics and repeatedly in her long lists she includes empire. I find it very problematic to list empire in with a list of great advancements without any deconstruction or critique of the very idea of empire. Evan's by contrast retells the stories of many great women's achievement both biblical and extra biblical. She also on occasion broadens her critique not just to hierarchy between genders but the idea of hierarchy at all in any context.

Both repeatedly use the word 'Lady'. I have written about my dislike of the word here. Evans however only ever used it in contexts where, had she been talking about men she may well have said gentlemen. Generally when she was talking about people and only once directed to the readers. Moran however got right up my noise by continually giving instructions to her readers preceded by calling them to attention with 'Ladies!'. 

Both authors while not writing a book about violence against women and the global situation do reference it. Evans to put her own struggles and difficulties in perspective. Moran to explain that the problem with modern feminism is that it is focused on these things while ignoring things like glossy magazines and pants being too small.

Both authors once mention the Vietnam war, both use it for illustrative purposes. In the case of both books I have forgotten what was being described! Evan's I remember said that some group of people discussed something - "Like veterans talk about 'Nam" I can't remember feeling it was inappropriate or offensive. I cannot remember the details of what Moran was talking about either save that it was about running away "faster than a Vietnamese boy covered in Nepalm". I wasn't expecting that sentence it kind of sprang at me from no where and made me feel positively sick.

Both authors discussed having children. Evan's wrote an honest and reflective account of her worries and fears about having children. She also explored issues around women's relationship with parenting and the difficulty of living in a world which defines women in relation to children and explored the duff theology in parenting as a woman's highest calling. Moran on the other hand wrote 'Childbirth gives women a gigantic set of balls'. To be fair on Moran this is not all she said and she did also point out that there are a variety of life experiences that can change and shape us. But it's almost that that makes these bizar one lines so problematic there is an inconsistency in her writing.

Both authors mention their vagina's. Evans in a discussion about teenage experience of church teaching on sex.  Famously there was big discussions about how that would affect christian bookshops and whether they were willing to stock the book or not. As far as I am aware there where no such discussions as to the inclusion of the c word which I can't even bring myself to write, but that's apparently what Moran calls her vagina.

Both books made me laugh out loud. Moran's book also made me shout and swear. Evan's book also made me cry. Moran's book left me with an overwhelming sense of frustration. Evan's book left me peaceful and wiser. 

My body

I love my body. It fascinates me. The way it changes, adapts, grows, learns, survives, thrives. It's energy, it's weariness, its journeying, its learning, it's power, its weakness, its uniqueness, its sameness, its joy, its sorrow, its story telling and its story making, it's dying and its renewing, its temporarlity and its eternity.

My body does not need to be thinned, tightened, controlled, straightened, perfected, tamed, tanned, lightened, changed.

My body is a paintbrush not a canvas. It creates its own picture, it is not a blank for others to paint perfection on.

I love my body, it is me and I am it. To alter it is to assault myself, to starve it is to hate myself.

I do not need to look in the mirror to know my body is there, it always comes with me. I do not need a mirror to tell me if there is something wrong with my body, it is supremely articulate and always let's me know. I do not need a mirror to tell me I'm the fairest in the land - I and my body have no desire to be.

My body beats the rhythm of the day, the week, the month, the year.

I am so tired of the war on my body. I was going to write a blog explaining why my vagina is not too lose, my legs not too hairy, my breasts not too saggy, but why should I. My body does not need to mount a defence against the tempest heading toward it, that storm's waves will crash apart against the rock that is my body.

I love my body and the more I'm told not to the more I'll love it in all its defiant glory. The older I get - the more defiant it will become it will wrinkle, increasing its ability to communicate a million complicated emotions, idea's and adventures. It will continue to journey away from that caged magazine pretty, towards beauty, freedom, hope, adventure, discovery, wisdom, death and glory.