Sleeping Beauty

I wonder how little girls grow to be so obsessed with how they look? I mean, jokes aside of course. I'm always kidding around about how it's fun to be a princess etc...But really, hearing my daughter talk over the past few days, I'm finding it a bit concerning. After all, she is only 4 years old!

Little things are popping up, and I'm starting to wonder...Is it Disney? Is it the Barbies? What is it? I certainly didn't introduce her to all this stuff on my own (although truthfully, I didn't fight it), but I'm wondering how much of it she picked up at school, and how much she picked up at home, and is any of it natural to little girls? Here are some of the comments I've heard from her over the past few weeks:

-Brush my hair a lot mommy so I look as pretty as Sleeping Beauty
-Mommy if I make a mean face will I look like the wicked witch?
-Mommy can I get princess shoes like the princesses on TV and live in a castle and marry a prince? (OK Honey- you are only 4!!! Give it UP!)
-Mommy- when I grow up can I wear nice makeup and fancy clothes and high heels and lots of jewelry so I can be the prettiest girl in the world?

These are hardly things that a little 4 year old should be thinking about. I mean really- who the heck cares who she marries? Shouldn't she be - I don't know - rolling in the dirt, playing tag or something?

I read an interesting but sad statistic a while back. It said that children (especially girls) of parents with eating disorders will develop one themselves on average by the age of 9. Having been bulimic in high school, this scares the heck out of me. I tormented myself for a whole year back when I was 14, and I certainly don't want to see my daughter go through this. I mean, back in high school, I weighed 120 lbs. Nothing to freak out over. Really- nothing to lose 35 lbs in 30 days starving yourself and killing your body over. Society is sick. The world is sick. This is sick.

All that being said, I think I have been careful not to speak about weight/diets etc. around my daughter. I've been really careful. I was not careful about the whole princess thing, and now I'm wondering if I'm contributing to something without even knowing it. The human psyche can be intensely complicated, and sometimes we have an impact on things without ever realizing it. I'm not trying to be hard on myself, after all, almost every little girl wants to be a princess, but I am wondering what we as a society do to contribute to the problem.

Having worn Hijab for as many years as I did, I thought that the physical cover would free me from the whole image thing. For many years it did the trick, it even helped me get rid of an eating disorder, and then I found a community of friends who were insanely obsessed with their looks and were even more freakishly self-conscious, as if they somehow had to find other ways to compensate for the scarf by making themselves more beautiful, more sexy, more attractive in ways other than hair and body. The more exposure I had to this, the more the positive effects of the scarf started to wear off, and the more I started to resent it. That's not the only thing that made me give up the Hijab, and it was certainly the least important element of my decision. There were many other factors, my marriage, my health, the social environment around us to name just a few.

Besides, this isn't about me and my choice to remove the scarf...That's a blog in itself. But I am wondering if there is anything out there that will free women from this insane obsession that seems to start at such a young age. There was a time when I thought my faith would save me from it, but even that didn't quite do the trick, at least not over the long term.

I know- my Muslim friends will be enraged when they read this. They will feel that I've betrayed a core element of our faith. My non- Muslim friends will think that this whole thing is no big deal, and that I'm over-reacting. Either way, let's wait and see. Let's see what happens when our children grow up...Will they be better, worse, or just the same? I'm hoping I'm not the most vain person in the book, but I know I'm also not the least vain. I've seen worse, I've also seen much better. I have some girlfriends who will never care how they look, and to be honest, I personally think that they should. Birkenstocks and socks just ain't happenin, no matter what they say. I have other friends that won't step out of the house unless they are decked to the max, and feel confident that they will be able to hold their own when faced with a room full of other women. I don't think I'm perfectly balanced in any way, but I hope that I'm balanced enough to make a positive contribution to my daughter, and to my immediate social network.

In the meantime, maybe I should buy my daughter a different role model doll. Hmmm- has anyone heard of 'I'm totally independent and beautiful and confident on the inside and don't give a heck about what people think of the outside' Barbie? Yeah, I didn't think so. I'll just keep on searching. Wish me luck.