Catie is currently in love with Sleeping Beauty, which I bought on DVD last year. She calls her “Teedee,” which is as close to “Beauty” as she can say. I’m surprised that she loves it as much as she does, I thought movies with plots were still going to be another year or two from now for her. Also, I expected the witch to freak her out (because Maleficent is scary), but she seems totally unphased. She tries to imitate the witch’s evil cackle, and a couple of times she’s tried to scream, “Fools! Imbeciles!” along with her, so obviously she’s not too spooked. (And btw, a 2 year-old trying to say “imbecile” is just about the funniest thing ever.)
For the record, I don’t encourage the Disney princess stuff, but I figure that most little girls go through a princess phase at some point or another. And if it makes her happy, fine. I don’t mind the movie that much, at least the music is nice. A lot of the Disney movies grate on my feminist nerve, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Sleeping Beauty is really not all that bad. Because really, the three fairies are the ones who save the day. The prince would’ve stayed chained up in the witch’s dungeon forever if they hadn’t sprung him from his cell, plus they save his butt about a dozen times on his way to rescue Sleeping Beauty. (Remember? They turn the arrows being shot at him into flowers, the boulders into bubbles, etc.) Heck, they were the ones who gave him the sword and shield he needed to kill the witch. So yeah, Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather can rock on with their bad selves. They kick butt in their own little flibbertygibbet fairy way.
And ok, yeah, the whole idea that she meets the prince one time and decides she’s in love with him, and the presumption that of course she’ll be married off on her sixteenth birthday… yeah. I know. But they do say something about it being the 14th century, and really, both of those plot points are no more absurd than anything in Romeo and Juliet. Why not get married at 16, since the Black Death will probably kill you before you turn 30? Go for it. Carpe diem, whatever.
Anyway, since I’ve now seen Sleeping Beauty approximately 10,000 times in the past few weeks (how else do you think I came up with such a thorough analysis of how it isn’t as anti-feminist as it might seem at first glance?), I decided it was time to try something else. When I was pregnant, I bought a ton of movies on DVD for Catie to watch when she was older. I have E.T., Dumbo, Lady & the Tramp, Charlotte’s Web, Mary Poppins, Wizard of Oz, you name it. But since Catie is kind of digging the whole princess thing, I suddenly remembered that we have both Cinderella and the Little Mermaid. Score!
(Don’t get me started about how awful an example Ariel is for little girls. She gives up her freaking voice in order to get the man of her dreams. I know. I KNOW!! But the music is gorgeous and fun, and right now I figure that Catie is too little to understand the plot anyway.)
So I went looking for either movie, and… they’re gone. As in, not on the bookshelf that contains all of our DVDs. And nowhere else in the house as far as I can tell. And now that I think about it, I haven’t seen them since we moved in this house. I can’t think of any other movies off the top of my head that are lost, but I’m just baffled. Did the movers lose yet another box? Were the DVDs in a miscellaneous box that got shoved in the attic? I don’t have a clue. And I’m feeling a little ridiculous, since we moved here almost seven months ago, and I’m just now noticing things that are missing.
Oh well. Seems we’re stuck with Sleeping Beauty in the meantime.
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Quick note on the health front: We’ve been really lucky with this cold, Catie’s only had a few minor asthma attacks which have cleared up with a dose of albuterol. She’s been generally pretty perky and happy through all of it, she’s been sleeping semi-decently, and she’s kept her appetite. So overall, it hasn’t been that bad. I keep waiting for it to take a turn for the worse, and maybe she will, but she’s on Day 5 of the gunk and so far, so good.
We just watched Sleeping Beauty again this morning. I don’t mind the Disney princess stuff that much – I figure it’ll eventually give me the opportunity to sit my daughter down and explain how WRONG it all is. I feel more strongly that she needs to be exposed to pop culture so we can talk about because she’s going to see it no matter what I do and I’d rather be there with her when she does.
Don’t freak out about the princess stuff. It’s nearly unavoidable unless you want to raise a social outcast. She’ll learn by example from you, so you can be her example of why the princesses are just fairy tales.