WTF?! Friday: Panty Panic

Someday you people are going to go through what I am going through right now: potty training. We've been working on this for a couple of months now -- we started wearing pull-ups full-time sometime over the summer. Her teachers at school have been really great, throwing parties for the kids when they fill up the potty chart, really pushing the positive reinforcement, etc., and of course my mother absolutely relishes the opportunities for bribery when we visit.

We're trying not to "make a huge deal of it" because we're those parents, and we don't want to give her a complex, but she's just about advanced beyond her current curriculum, and in order to move up to the next classroom, she needs to be fully potty trained. So with her birthday approaching -- less than six weeks! -- we decided to take the leap and start sending her to school in underpants ... and it has been far more traumatic for us than I ever expected it to be.

Not because we're not ready for Our Little Girl to grow up, though, but because I don't understand what wackadoodle decided that bikini panties were an appropriate, good idea for TODDLERS. Seriously. Teeny little bikini undies, for teeny little girls. The mind, she boggles.

I mean, COME ON NOW. This is a screen shot of an actual page from an actual major manufacter's website (brand has been redacted because I don't want to get sued). I am not a prude by any stretch of the imagination -- although I will also be the first to admit that being a parent, especially of a little girl, has settled me down somewhat (except for the cussing) -- but I can't be the only person who thinks that low-rise underpants for little girls are just eleventy kinds of wrong, can I? I accidentally bought Shae a pair of low-rise jeans once and I won't let her wear them outside the house unless she's also wearing a bodysuit, because even baby buttcrack is NOT CUTE.

Just thinking about this makes my head explode, seriously. Granted, I am not the most fashion-forward person on earth, but I still don't think it's necessary to PUT LITTLE KIDS IN PANTS WHERE THEIR BUTTS ARE HANGING OUT. That guy on American Idol with that "Pants on the Ground" song -- he has a point, you know. Everybody looks like a fool when their underwear is showing.

And of course sometimes I look at the clothes they sell for children my daughter's age and size (almost 3, 4T-5T or little girls' 4-5) and I think to myself: WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? Who dresses their kids like this? Belly shirts? Hip huggers? See-through, skin-tight little numbers? Microminiskirts? REALLY? Have you people never heard of pedophiles? And are you prepared to put your kids on the Pill the minute they hit puberty? Because there's a reason why teenage pregnancy rates are going up lately, and I am pretty sure that DRESSING OUR BABIES LIKE HOOCHIE MAMAS is one of the contributing factors to this problem. Stuff can be cute without making our daughters look like tiny little whores. It's gross.

Am I nuts? Over-reacting? Is it prototypically radically femi-Nazi-ish of me to start wondering if maybe we actually should send her to a convent? I love raising a mini-me, but the pink and the ruffles and the princess bullshit everywhere are going to be my undoing as it is, and now THIS. God help me. WHY CAN'T MY KID JUST BE A KID?

Magic's In The Makeup

Sometimes I think I let Shae spend too much time with My Anonymous Mother, because I see her do things like this ...

... pretending her crayon is lipstick, and I know she didn't learn this crap from me. I know I have lipstick somewhere in the house, but I'll be damned if I could tell you where it is. Maybe the desk drawer?

(I was spying on them through the sliding glass door while I was outside taking pictures for my Project 365 -- that's why there are weird shadows and strangle angles. Sorry about that.)

Still, though, even if she is getting her "how to be a girly-girl" lessons from her grandmother and not her mother, it's nice to know that no matter what, she's still my kid, you know?

See?

Neverending Story

Okay, now we are starting to approach insanity-pepper-and-space-coyote levels of crazy because holy tomato we are still opening Christmas presents.

We've been working on getting her to be more polite and stop asking "What do you have for me?" the second we walk in the door, but if this keeps up, that's never going to happen. Damn you, generous people, don't you realize you're jacking up our manners instruction?

The gifts were from one of the salespeople at work that I support. I like her anyway, so the bribes are totally unnecessary, but I appreciate them just the same. I have no adversion to other people treating my kid (as long as they don't try to spoil her). Last year she gave us a cute little dress that Shae wore for school pictures. This year, we got two "The Princess and the Frog" themed toys: a tea party set (yay! plastic!) and a Tiana doll.

Now, we haven't seen the movie, so I can't speak to whether it is good or not, or whether I like the character or not, or any of the stuff that my degree in Writing for Television, Radio and Film is good for. (No, really, that's my degree.) As you already know, I think "princess" is the single filthiest word in the English language, so the entire concept kind of gives me the dry heaves. (And no, I will not accept that The Cult of the Princess has become unavoidable in the raising of an American girl -- not on my watch!)

But at the same time, it's hard to be all about diversity when you're deliberately avoiding exposure to certain things, right? Our household is the very model of the modern poly-racial family -- we've got the white mom, the half-Latino dad, the bi-racial daughter, and even the partly Asian cat (Zöe is part Siamese) -- but what we aren't always tolerant of? Is different kinds of femininity than mine.

All of which is to say that it doesn't happen often, but sometimes we let her put on her crown and play princess. Sometimes. But only for a minute or two.

The Princess Diaries

So ... these shoes.

My Anonymous Mother picked these up at a yard sale, along with a matching Cinderella ball gown costume. To say I am not a fan of the outfit is probably an understatement -- as far as I can tell, I am one of the least girly moms I know. I own skirts and dresses, but I wear them at most once a month, when I have to go to church or a wedding or something. Company holiday parties. That sort of thing.

But these shoes kill me. Shae calls them "ballerina shoes," which cracks me right up. Yesterday she wanted to wear them around the house, and once I got her to agree that we don't wear them on the stairs (they're too big, and I don't want her to fall, and yes I know this is maybe a little too over protective, but I don't care), we had ourselves a Dress-Up Situation.

I try to discourage certain kinds of feminity as much as possible -- not really into the whole "damsel in distress" thing, because sometimes the princess needs to save her own damn self -- but really, even to an old-school hard-core feminist like me, what is offensive about a tea party? I like tea parties. Sometimes there is cake.

Everybody loves cake. Even wicked bitter evil queens, like me.