How I miss Thomas the Train.I never imagined typing those words. 

To quote my older son: “I’m excessed with Disney princesses.”

Truer words, son. Truer words. 

I loathe those princesses. 

To clarify: I’m totally fine with the veritable pu-pu platter of princess dolls he received for his birthday.

What drives me ape-shit crazy is the inane conversations about dresses and hair accompanying this excession. 

The princessification of our lives began with those damn YouTube videos featuring grown-ass women playing with princess “magic clips”. Seriously: they manipulate impressionable minds by opening toys shipped direct from Mattel and make videos. They’re the “Saturday morning cartoon ads” of the 2010’s. (Notice the above video has 84 million views. She must be loaded and I’m chiding her. Who’s the idiot?)

It’s free advertising for Disney and (apparently) these grown-ups gain self-respect based upon their “likes” and “views” playing with toys.

Worst of all, their dialogue consists of nothing more than:

“Look what a beautiful dress Cinderella is wearing.”

“Ooh, isn’t Anna wearing a beautiful dress?”

What this woman is doing merits a head exam. Regardless her uncreative, greedy reasons, my son desperately wants to watch these stupid-ass videos of Disney toys. 

And he enacts the same conversations with his dolls. “Oh, Rapunzel, you have such a beautiful dress.” “Cinderella, you look beautiful wearing Elsa’s dress.”

And my son imitates it! These loathsome videos rob me of money and my son of imagination. There’s no story arc. There’s no hero journey, no problem-solving or growth. 

And then I find myself sounding like an absurd knee-jerk liberal when I manipulate the conversations thusly:

Him: (as Rapunzel) “Hello, Cinderella. Do you like my very long hair?”

Me (as Cinderella), “Meh. It’s fine. But what’s cooler is your medical degree. I actually hurt my arm while I was out rock-climbing. Could you take a look at my arm and fix me? Then we can still go do our volunteer work after you fix it. I love helping others.”

I couldn’t help myself. Girls shouldn’t be content to just talk hair and dresses; nor should boys. 

 (I finally put the kai-bash on these videos when he stumbled on a video where two girls acted out a “mean girl” fight between Elsa and Anna dolls. My son later quoted them, verbatim, and I have taken YouTube off our iPads.)

And my son immediately made Rapunzel go to work fixing Cindy’s arm (for two minutes. Then it was back to hair.). 

Hey, he was game to make it a game. But thusfar, he doesn’t proactively make a scenario. It’s still just dresses and hair.

Insert suicidal emoji, here. 

Anyway. 

Before my own kids, I heard other parents complain about Disney shackling girls with dreams of being saved by a prince and getting married. I thought my friends were ridiculous.

But this morning, my son asked, “Are you married yet? Like Rapunzel? When are you getting married?”

I had an OMG moment, realizing he’s put Disney values on me and applied them to his life. 

One day, as he walked around speaking in 3rd person in the role of “Rapunzel” with three blankets tied to his head, I said, “Buddy? Should I just throw away all your other toys since you don’t play with them anymore?”

“Fine. Except my princesses. Because they’re beautiful.”

🙄