MamaBlogger365 - Why Does Ursula Get a Bad Rap? by Mindy Stokes

My daughter will turn five in a couple of weeks and she wants to have a Barbie party. I told her that a party with an anatomically incorrect icon is never going to happen on my watch. So then she asked if she could have a Little Mermaid one. I conceded. Isn't Ariel better than Barbie? At least she can be a little sassy, right? She did disobey her father, King Triton, on occasion. This gives me hope.

Let me give you some context to my reasons for denying my beautiful daughter Barbie. I'm a lesbian and so is her Mama (I guess you figured that one out). We conceived Soleil using artificial insemination through a fertility clinic. My partner and I are both Caucasian, the donor African-American, thus Soleil's hair will never be long, blond or red. Instead she's got an amazing afro with curls strangers long for. I teach women's studies, so I'm a proud feminist (yahoo!) and I'm keenly aware of beauty ideals and eating disorders. And to top it all off, I don't appreciate Disney or Mattel making their way into my life using princesses, mermaids and unreasonably thin dolls with the ultimate message of patriarchy: what a girl looks like is more important than her mind and in Ariel's case, her voice.

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Photo credit: den_lille_havfrue by pedrojperez|MorgueFile




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