The discussion in comments tothis article about Disney princesses (especially pointing out that WHERE THE FUCK IS MULAN in all this and also Tiana, and how nobody talks about how cool Maleficent is) is better than the story itself, which is reductive (exposure to Disney = your child ending up in a thong on Jersey Shore).
I spent Sunday afternoon at a baseball game with my dad, a pretty common occurrence when I was a little kid. And they did a thing at Miller Park where little kids got to go out and stand on the bases with the Brewers for a couple of minutes during the national anthem. About half those kids were girls, 12 or younger, who looked like they were seeing living gods before them as they stood out there.
I watched all the Disney movies when I was little. We went to see Sleeping Beauty in the theater and I must have known all the Beauty and the Beast songs by heart, and yet I also got hauled along to softball games where guys slid into third when they were losing by ten runs because that’s how you do. Nobody at any of these things would have described himself as a feminist, yet their attitude was that I had as much right to be there as my brother. Which is how your options open.
And close: I didn’t hate my hair until second grade, when I overheard another girl I admired complaining about hers, and I realized mine looked even sillier.
A.