We took Baby J to the pediatrician this morning. Fortunately, nothing about his health was distressing. But as we set up his next appointment, the receptionist gave Bee a sticker. Totally random happenstance, but it was an Ariel sticker.
Bee was excited (as she always is about the Little Mermaid), and I didn't think anything of it. I've tried to let the whole Disney princess thing be neither here nor there, so that it won't be a power struggle and so that I won't be one of those completely unhinged moms.
After we got home, as J was nursing, Bee pipes up (from her position laying flat on her back on the floor and looking up at her enshrined sticker) "I don't like myself. I want to look like this."
Let the unhinging begin.
It was totally unprovoked, I hadn't said anything at all about the sticker/movie/stupid-freaking-model-of-disobedience-and-lack-of-any-real-self-worth mermaid. So Bee and I had a talk about "Ariel is not real. I AM real. That means I am more special than Ariel, because Heavenly Father made me. Ariel is just a drawing, but I have a body." (To which Bee added "And a Spirit!" I guess Sunbeams has kicked in already!) I think I handled my deep-seated feminist anger well and didn't focus on it...I tried to just focus the discussion on Bee and how smart she is, how sweet she is, and even how pretty she is (which we usually don't talk about because I don't want her to focus on it....apparently we need to work on that!). It was a good talk.
But I'm still reeling over the power of a well-funded franchise over our little girl's perception of herself. I might have to become a little more obsessive.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Are you seious?
I ran to campus on Thursday with the kids (which I try to avoid doing, because it's just a hassle, and I get stares like there's not tomorrow) because I needed to drop off a hard copy of my reading list to one of my professors (really it was just a not-so-subtle hint to remind him I exist, since he hasn't responded in any way to the first copy of my list that I emailed to him before the semester break).
Anyway. I was grumbling to myself about taking the stroller down the 5 flights of steps from the top of the parking garage (Do they have an elevator? Yes. Was it working? No.) when a nice woman struck up a conversation with me. Turns out she's in another department with offices on the same floor as my department offices, and so we were going the same way. I don't really remember how it came up, but at some point she said "There are some students who do what you're doing...family, and school. And maybe neither one gets the attention they deserve, but it seems like you're putting your family first."
What a way to kill a perfectly nice conversation. I mean, I recognize the "you're putting your family first" as a possible attempt to make up for the preceding remark. But in five minutes of walking and talking, can she really judge that I'm doing that?
I always have this overly-defensive reaction to this sort of comment...I want to jump into how developmentally advanced Bee is linguistically and Baby J is physically, how I make them hats and clothes, how I quilt, how I make and can homemade jelly, and dry seal food storage things, how my house is always clean when I go to bed at night because of my obsessive need for order. And not to let my professional side be outdone by all that, how my grades are the same or better than my single and childless counterparts, how I've presented at three graduate student conferences and three professional conferences (one of them twice), how one of my papers has been published (albeit humbly, and mostly thanks to David Wiseman), how I am proceeding through my program ahead of schedule, and how I consistently earn "meets and exceeds departmental expectations" on my teaching observation evaluations (even the semester that they observed me when I had morning sickness so badly that I was sure I was going to fail the evaluation)!
But it's just that: defensive. It's completely self-serving to try to bring any of that up. So I usually just find a way to wrap up the conversation, and mosey on through the rain with my kids, to drop off my papers.
Anyway. I was grumbling to myself about taking the stroller down the 5 flights of steps from the top of the parking garage (Do they have an elevator? Yes. Was it working? No.) when a nice woman struck up a conversation with me. Turns out she's in another department with offices on the same floor as my department offices, and so we were going the same way. I don't really remember how it came up, but at some point she said "There are some students who do what you're doing...family, and school. And maybe neither one gets the attention they deserve, but it seems like you're putting your family first."
What a way to kill a perfectly nice conversation. I mean, I recognize the "you're putting your family first" as a possible attempt to make up for the preceding remark. But in five minutes of walking and talking, can she really judge that I'm doing that?
I always have this overly-defensive reaction to this sort of comment...I want to jump into how developmentally advanced Bee is linguistically and Baby J is physically, how I make them hats and clothes, how I quilt, how I make and can homemade jelly, and dry seal food storage things, how my house is always clean when I go to bed at night because of my obsessive need for order. And not to let my professional side be outdone by all that, how my grades are the same or better than my single and childless counterparts, how I've presented at three graduate student conferences and three professional conferences (one of them twice), how one of my papers has been published (albeit humbly, and mostly thanks to David Wiseman), how I am proceeding through my program ahead of schedule, and how I consistently earn "meets and exceeds departmental expectations" on my teaching observation evaluations (even the semester that they observed me when I had morning sickness so badly that I was sure I was going to fail the evaluation)!
But it's just that: defensive. It's completely self-serving to try to bring any of that up. So I usually just find a way to wrap up the conversation, and mosey on through the rain with my kids, to drop off my papers.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Why I love Melveena McKendrick
I'm doing work, I promise, I just had to shout out to the void! I really love to read Melveena McKendrick's work. (If nothing else, she has an awesome name!) She has a strong voice, and doesn't take her academia so seriously as to make her writing obtuse. She writes on cross-dressing women in Golden Age plays, a number of feminist theoretical concerns, and history of Spain in general.
Today, though, there are two quotes that are why I love to read this woman:
(She's talking about Lope's "El castigo sin venganza," a really good [never thought I'd put THAT adjective with the genre following...despite the unfortunate plot, great writing] wife-murder play)
"And although each of us may, quite legitimately, favour a specific interpretation, it is impossible categorically to deny validity to any of the carefully thought-out and observed readings so far offered us." (82)
"There is something about Spanish Golden Age plays that encourages us to try to become their master rather than their servant, whereas a great many of them, I suspect, are far more resistant to domination than we like to think. [...] If we try to stop trying to squeeze the play into the comfortable corset of our own moral perceptions and literary predilections, what we are left with is an ambiguous play and our own feelings of discomfort and puzzlement. Since we cannot very convincingly ascribe this to incompetence on Lope's part, we have to assume that he has achieved more or less what he set out to achieve. The play then stands as an aging man's statement on what he has learned about life - that there often are no reassuring solutions, no neat apportionings of blame." (93-4)
From BCom 35.1 (1983):79-95.
Today, though, there are two quotes that are why I love to read this woman:
(She's talking about Lope's "El castigo sin venganza," a really good [never thought I'd put THAT adjective with the genre following...despite the unfortunate plot, great writing] wife-murder play)
"And although each of us may, quite legitimately, favour a specific interpretation, it is impossible categorically to deny validity to any of the carefully thought-out and observed readings so far offered us." (82)
"There is something about Spanish Golden Age plays that encourages us to try to become their master rather than their servant, whereas a great many of them, I suspect, are far more resistant to domination than we like to think. [...] If we try to stop trying to squeeze the play into the comfortable corset of our own moral perceptions and literary predilections, what we are left with is an ambiguous play and our own feelings of discomfort and puzzlement. Since we cannot very convincingly ascribe this to incompetence on Lope's part, we have to assume that he has achieved more or less what he set out to achieve. The play then stands as an aging man's statement on what he has learned about life - that there often are no reassuring solutions, no neat apportionings of blame." (93-4)
From BCom 35.1 (1983):79-95.
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