My 3 1/2 year old niece was just here for ten days and she is completely consumed with BarbieDisneyPrincessesBallerinasandthecolorpink. Aidan is also into much more "boy" stuff than I imagined possible for a child of mine. I spend a lot of time puzzling over nurture vs. nature with these things.
There is a clear desire for each of them to create an identity with their sex. Aidan's behavior with fighting and gun play took some time for me to understand, and has been hard for me to swallow, but I try to make a distinction between the child's world and mine, and trust that he knows how to play better than I do. My niece's gender stuff is almost more bewildering because I'm not used to it and because it's more personal for me, sharing a gender with her and all.
I rejected a lot of girl stuff at a young age, though maybe my memory begins when I was older than her. At the same time, I don't think that I participated in the kind of imaginative play that Aidan does and that I remember my brother doing. I think that I felt sort of lonely, not having a strong gender identity, though I never, ever wanted to be a boy. So I'm sort of torn between finding my niece's behavior objectionable and thinking that maybe it's really healthy.
And the whole thing has made me a little nervous that I might have a girl and she might crave Barbies the way that Aidan craves violence in his play. Kids have a way of smashing apart your reality, and I'm not confident that I would handle that as gracefully with a girl as I have with a boy. It's funny, everybody assumes that I'm just praying for a girl baby, and I always say that I don't care, I just want a healthy baby, but there's a little (perhaps scared) part of me that's rooting for another boy. I've already made peace with the shooting, but princesses? Pink? Barbie? I don't know if I can do it.
Comments
I really would not worry too much. Since I did not play with dolls like barbie and you did not play with dolls like barbie it might follow that your daughter will not paly with barbies. Your favorite dolls was a large Raggady Ann that you dragged around everywhere you could. I remember one Christmas in Chicago your Dad built you a large 3 story doll house. We loaded it iwth furniture and a Madome Alexander doll I had from my childhood. You never played with it. I still have that doll which looks new (the furniture is long gone). If you have a daughter (which I am hoping for) we can 'test' her with the same doll to see if she will follow in our foot steps.
Love Mom
Oh that's really funny - Kay was telling me a couple of years ago that as a child, she wanted a Mme Alexander Doll and never had one - and her last name was Alexander. I told her that I had never heard of a Mme Alexander Doll and it turns out that I had one!
hey Christy, just checking in to see how you were doing. if i were still in NY, i'd come help you clean and paint, whatever... i can relate to the fear of the hospital so much. i have to say that if worst comes to worst, and you have to go to the hospital like i did, LET IT GO... i didn't, and my labor was hell from my anxiety.
as for Barbie.. i had Barbies, but all i really did was give them shag haircuts and modify their clothes.. chloe will become consumed with desire for them only if she sees a commercial on television. we avoid the Pink Aisle in the stores like the plague. out of sight, out of mind, i guess. i want to get her a Feral Cheryl, but they are so pricey...wish there was a cheaper alternative.
anyway, hugs and good vibes to you and yours. hope you had a happy new year and everything is good with you. xoxoxo
You can just drop her off here in barbie wonderland. My father got Isabella 'magical musical barbie caslte' so we are officially a barbie commercial. Althea has hardly any interest in them except she started sewing and they get the majority of her clothing lines. Not isabella - BIG TIME BARBIE GIRL. she can sit in her room for 2 hours all alone and play with barbies....she wouldnt even phathom shooting anything. Pure girl.
Malikas having a boy (on a side note)
I am really hoping that Phoebe will not be a Barbie girl! I'm not, and it wouldn't occur to me to understand it if she did end up that way. Since your baby and Phoebe will only be a few months apart in age, maybe we can get them together to Not Play Barbies!
I was a total girlie girl when I was a kid - pink is still my favorite color - but my mother thwarted all my barbie desires. She wouldn't let one into the house, no matter how much I begged, and the one time I was given a barbie, she threw it into the fireplace. Broke my tiny heart. Based on that experience, if I had a girl and she wanted Barbie, I would let her have it. Just so I could play out all my lost barbie desires.
Have you heard of Bratz? They're the new Barbie - big headed clubbing teenage girl dolls. Very popular and a lot of girls apparently prefer them to barbie (she's getting old fashioned). On the bright side, they are much more anatomically correct than Barbie, and also much more ethnically diverse - on the not so bright side, they are also total clothes horses and all wear a patented teenage princess sneer. They look like the girls who were always threatening to beat me up in High school.
There are also Groovy Girls - rag dolls that wear very groovy outfits and have groovy accesories and are fairly affordable. There are Groovy Guys, too. Spike has a few of both. Not that they get any attention. But I tried.
Anyway, I still grew up to be a feminist. I'm just a feminist who likes pink. And dolls.
Comments
I really would not worry too much. Since I did not play with dolls like barbie and you did not play with dolls like barbie it might follow that your daughter will not paly with barbies. Your favorite dolls was a large Raggady Ann that you dragged around everywhere you could. I remember one Christmas in Chicago your Dad built you a large 3 story doll house. We loaded it iwth furniture and a Madome Alexander doll I had from my childhood. You never played with it. I still have that doll which looks new (the furniture is long gone). If you have a daughter (which I am hoping for) we can 'test' her with the same doll to see if she will follow in our foot steps.
Love Mom
Oh that's really funny - Kay was telling me a couple of years ago that as a child, she wanted a Mme Alexander Doll and never had one - and her last name was Alexander. I told her that I had never heard of a Mme Alexander Doll and it turns out that I had one!
hey Christy, just checking in to see how you were doing. if i were still in NY, i'd come help you clean and paint, whatever... i can relate to the fear of the hospital so much. i have to say that if worst comes to worst, and you have to go to the hospital like i did, LET IT GO... i didn't, and my labor was hell from my anxiety.
as for Barbie.. i had Barbies, but all i really did was give them shag haircuts and modify their clothes.. chloe will become consumed with desire for them only if she sees a commercial on television. we avoid the Pink Aisle in the stores like the plague. out of sight, out of mind, i guess. i want to get her a Feral Cheryl, but they are so pricey...wish there was a cheaper alternative.
anyway, hugs and good vibes to you and yours. hope you had a happy new year and everything is good with you. xoxoxo
You can just drop her off here in barbie wonderland. My father got Isabella 'magical musical barbie caslte' so we are officially a barbie commercial. Althea has hardly any interest in them except she started sewing and they get the majority of her clothing lines. Not isabella - BIG TIME BARBIE GIRL. she can sit in her room for 2 hours all alone and play with barbies....she wouldnt even phathom shooting anything. Pure girl.
Malikas having a boy (on a side note)
I am really hoping that Phoebe will not be a Barbie girl! I'm not, and it wouldn't occur to me to understand it if she did end up that way. Since your baby and Phoebe will only be a few months apart in age, maybe we can get them together to Not Play Barbies!
I was a total girlie girl when I was a kid - pink is still my favorite color - but my mother thwarted all my barbie desires. She wouldn't let one into the house, no matter how much I begged, and the one time I was given a barbie, she threw it into the fireplace. Broke my tiny heart. Based on that experience, if I had a girl and she wanted Barbie, I would let her have it. Just so I could play out all my lost barbie desires.
Have you heard of Bratz? They're the new Barbie - big headed clubbing teenage girl dolls. Very popular and a lot of girls apparently prefer them to barbie (she's getting old fashioned). On the bright side, they are much more anatomically correct than Barbie, and also much more ethnically diverse - on the not so bright side, they are also total clothes horses and all wear a patented teenage princess sneer. They look like the girls who were always threatening to beat me up in High school.
There are also Groovy Girls - rag dolls that wear very groovy outfits and have groovy accesories and are fairly affordable. There are Groovy Guys, too. Spike has a few of both. Not that they get any attention. But I tried.
Anyway, I still grew up to be a feminist. I'm just a feminist who likes pink. And dolls.