Disney movies would have every little girl in the world believing that there is a man out there who will rescue them and all they have to do is wait to be rescued.  I don’t want my girls to feel like they are limited in any way.  I want them to be confident, strong, smart and capable.  They shouldn’t feel like they have to be in a relationship (when they’re older) to be happy.  I want them to know that their happiness comes from themselves.

Eating disorders are becoming even more common among girls and at younger ages.  According to one site 6-7% of all women and young girls have anorexia and/or bulimia.  Further 15% of all women and young girls have “some kind of disordered eating patterns.”

None of this even touches on the general idea that women are supposed to be less intelligent than men and many women even act less intelligent as a way of attracting men.  There can only be short list of reasons that they would do that and most of them come back to confidence.

So, taking the long way around to a funny story.  J saw a Barbie doll in a store.  Barbie is known to be a near unattainable image of what women can be physically.  According to this article, one in 100,000 women may be proportioned like Barbie while one in 50 will have Ken’s body type.

Anyway, S thought that she was being funny by telling J she didn’t like Barbie and that J would follow her lead and not want one.  It didn’t work and eventually S said Barbie was a slut, thinking that J wasn’t paying attention anyway, I guess.

One day my sister took the girls to a store and there were Barbies on the shelf by the door.  J saw them and announced “My mom thinks Barbie is a slut.”  My sister said all the elderly in the store turned to scoff at this four-year-old and her guardian (my sister at the time) who would scream slut without hesitation.

After much convincing, the girls got dressed and we made our way down to the park with the promise that we would have a picnic.  They had slept until eleven in the morning, had a quick breakfast and finally we were out the door.  On our way to the trail we passed the gift shop.  The girls were already complaining so I promised that we would go to the gift shop after we finished our hike.

J was finished pretty early on.  She told me that she couldn’t walk anymore because she was tired and hungry.  She sat down a couple times.  As soon as we found something that interested her she became independent again immediately.  At one of the creek crossings there was a stone path.  She was able to navigate it herself and that energized her a bit.

At about that time A decided that she needed to tinkle and there was no time to wait.  So I pulled down her pants and held her under her knees and told her to go.  After a brief period of trepidation she peed on a fallen leaf and when she had finished I put her down and pulled up her pants.  She looked at the wet leaf and laughed like a stoner, commenting “Ha, I tinkled on a leaf.”

Eventually we made it back to the gift shop, into which we had never ventured before, and we went inside.  They had a good time looking at everything.  I decided that I would buy them each a geode ($3 each) and that we could crack them together.  That would be something that they would enjoy because they would get to use hammers and get crystals out of the deal.

Later that night we were at dinner and I asked J if she had told Mommy what she had gotten that day.  J looked at her mom and said, “Daddy bought me a crack rock.”  In the middle of a crowded restaurant.  Who over heard?  I don’t know but S and I got a pretty good laugh out of it and children’s services haven’t shown up yet.