How to Make Peace With Your Little Princess

Where did she come from, this frilly dress-wearing, sparkly shod diva who dominates your life, demands elaborate hairstyles and screams incessantly until you get it right? You raised her without gender bias, bought her trucks, fixed the toilet with her by your side, but she still wants to be called Princess Sparkle Candy Butterfly Fairy and dress in pink—where did you go wrong? There’s no changing her, so follow these steps to make peace with your little princess.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Endless patience
• Post-feminist literature
• Open mind

1. Breathe deeply, contemplate your pouty princess and remember that you love her.
2. Think long term; while the Dorothy Gale shoe phase can seem forever, there will be a time when your little princess no longer wears sparkly shoes in any weather and keeps them on 24/7. Few girls enter college wearing red sequined shoes.
3. Toss out your preconceived notions of the overall-clad, block building, assertive-yet-rational, androgynously styled girl you were sure you would raise.
4. Take in the positives about your little princess—she is asserting her wishes, choosing her own path, not afraid to express herself, sure of your unconditional love and confident. The rest is window dressing.
5. Offer role models for the future. The world is full of powerful, intelligent, capable princess types. Comic book characters, fairy-tale girls (the book versions, not the animated movie ones), entertainers, politicians and artists create good opportunities to empower your princess to take her sparkling female energy and run with it.
6. Step in when others try to force their stereotypes on your princess; remind Uncle Phil that dresses don’t mean she can’t climb a tree, Grandpa that a friendly four-year-old is not “flirting” when she stops to chat, and Cousin Lucy that fingernail polish isn’t a sign of weakness and to stop giving your daughter dirty looks.
7. Continue your love, support and reasonable rules, and you’ll be amazed at the girl she grows into, whether she continues to embrace stereotypes or defies them wildly.

Tips & Warnings

• Remember that if you’d successfully created the gender-bias-free girl of your dreams, you’d advocate for her acceptance by society; give your princess the same advocacy within and without.
• While accepting her girlie nature is what you’re after, allowing her to be a dominating diva desirous of dangling earrings and hell-on-wheels if she doesn’t get her way, won’t serve her well in the long run. Remind her that rules are for all, not just the badly dressed.
• Never promote the idea that there is only one way to be a successful girl, because she may not be able to fit that model. Not only will she judge others by that definition of success (starting a cycle of social ostracism), she will endlessly judge herself, giving up hope for your love, start wearing dark eyeliner and black lipstick at twelve, date a boy named Fang and eventually work at a chain restaurant you avoid due to the scanty outfits the servers are required to wear.