My generation (30ish-year-olds) is currently experiencing a pretty unique opportunity to bond with our children. Over the past few years we’ve been living through a total reboot of our childhoods. All of the things that we enjoyed as kids – everything from the Care Bears and My Little Pony to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Transformers – have come back in a big way, and it makes for an interesting situation. Even if you’re not a fan of the new versions of old characters, you can’t help but feel the giddy sense of joy at seeing your children fall in love with the characters you too were once obsessed with.
A couple of weeks ago my cousin and I had the opportunity to take our daughters to see The Little Mermaid on Stage by Disney Junior, a musical play based on the original movie and performed entirely by kids and young teens. It was an awesome opportunity becdause both of our daughters love the Disney princesses and are fans of Ariel in particular, but if we’re being completely honest here, it was as much for us as for them. When Leah and I were kids we were obsessed with The Little Mermaid. It wouldn’t have been an exaggeration to say that we watched the movie a hundred times or more. We could quote every line, sing every song. When we went swimming we would hold our legs together and pretend we had mermaid fins. We lived and breathed The Little Mermaid. So to get the chance to relive a bit of that old obsession, while also getting to see how excited our girls were to see the show…well, that was pretty damn awesome.
Cutest little play-goers in the world right there!
And the thing is, like I said earlier, my generation has been given that opportunity time and again lately. I can snuggle up on the couch with my daughter to watch Ninja Turtles and genuinely enjoy myself because I still love the characters to this day. I can sit on the floor and play with My Little Pony toys with her and make her happy by actually knowing all the character’s names. I can read her stories about the Hulk and Captain America and Spiderman and be able to have actually conversations with her about the characters because I know their backstories. And all of this, of course, makes her happy as well, because she gets to enjoy the things she likes with mommy.
It may seem a little childish on the suface, but I personally think that a little childishness in life can be a good thing. And besides, what better way is there to bond with your child than to share mutal interests? After all, it can be hard enough to close the generation gap between parent and child, so why not take every opportunity that you can? Relive your childhood a little, and help your kids to live theirs with you in it. 🙂
First, I want to give a bit shout-out to all those who are involved in the running of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. It’s got to take a lot of time and dedication to keep track of so many participants, making sure that non-participants are removed from the list, and ensuring that participants get the attention they deserve. Kudos!
Second, a double-huge shout-out to all my fellow participants who made it (sometimes kicking and screaming) to the end of the challenge. Some of those letters were pretty difficult, but you did it! You rock! 😀
Third, a triple-huge shout-out to all those who stopped by my blog during April and commented on my posts. I had some great conversations this month, met some cool new friends, and gained a number of new followers. I hope you all stick close by, because it’s been a blast, and I’ve been truly happy to meet you all. 🙂
The challenge has been a great deal of fun, and I got a lot of great comments on my 26 posts, so as part of this review I present a list of links to each of my posts in case anyone missed anything or is just dropping by now and would like to check a couple of them out.
In case you somehow missed it, my theme for the challenge was “Fictional Characters”. Each one of these characters, even the ones chosen out of duress of very difficult letters, holds a special place in my heart for one reason or another. The TV shows, movies, comics, cartoons, and video games mentioned were overwhelmingly a great part of my childhood, and in some cases an incredible part of my adulthood. If you’ve got the time, check some of them out. You totally won’t be disappointed.
And finally, before I sign off, I wanted to share with you a couple of the blogs that I’ve come across during this particular challenge. I came into contact with so many awesome fellow bloggers this past month that it’s impossible to mention them all, but these are a couple of the ones I fully plan to keep tabs on even now that the challenge is over.
A Scenic Route – Kirsten is a fellow writer who blogs about her “journey into noveldom”. This month she wrote a wonderful series of posts with the theme “Backstage at the Blog”, in which she gave some wonderful tips, hints, and ideas for fellow bloggers, in addition to sharing info about her own blogging journey.
Sophie’s Thoughts and Fumbles – Sophie is a writer of many genres who uses her blog as a place to talk about reading, writing, all the topics in between, and whatever else she so desires. She is also the brains behind the mini-challenge that a few of us participated in in addition to the A to Z challenge: the Supernatural A to Z Challenge. She wrote about ghosts and ghoulies this month, and while I didn’t often comment on her posts because my WordPress reader doesn’t make it easy for me to deal with other blogging websites, I still thoroughly enjoyed reading about all the creepy creatures that she posted.
Alex Hurst – Alex is one of my favorite new people because she is fun, bubbly, and friendly, and we apparently have a great deal in common. The fantasy writer spent the month talking about different aspects of writing and being a writer. Her post “J for Jargon” cracked me up because so many of the definitions she came up with were SO TRUE.
I would love to share some more blogs, and perhaps I will in the future, but this has been such a busy month that I simply do not have the time it would take to go through all the wonderful blogs I’ve found during this challenge. However, if you’re really, truly interested in finding some great new people to follow, check out the A to Z sign-up list and just start clicking. There are literally hundreds of wonderful blogs amongst that list.
And now, with all that aside, I must say adieu, and take a much-deserved nap. Cheers everyone! ❤
My first alphabetical fictional character is one who was a huge favorite of mine growing up: Ariel, better known as “The Little Mermaid”.
I’ve defended Ariel (and the other Disney Princesses) before, but for today we’re going to ignore the people who like to complain about what a bad influence the Disney Princesses are on young girls and just pretend for a moment that The Little Mermaid is just a nice movie with nothing to complain about, because this is my childhood, dammit.
Back as far as I can remember, I’ve been watching Disney movies, but The Little Mermaid was the crowning jewel of my childhood and I loved Ariel absolutely beyond words. She was my favorite Disney character when I was little because she embodied what every little girl imagines their life to be like. Admit it, ladies: even if you had a charmed childhood, you grew up imagining that there was something better out there, that no one truly understood you, that every time your parents scolded you or reprimanded you they were just stifling who you really were! Don’t even try to deny it. That self-important, adventurous attitude is part of growing up, and that’s what made Ariel so easy to relate to. She gave up everything she had in order to follow her dreams, and in the end she proved to everyone that they’d just been blind to the truth that she saw so easily.
Plus, come on. Mermaids!
My cousins and I must have watched this movie more than a hundred times, easy, and it became a regular game for us to play “mermaids” when we were out swimming at the beach. We would hold our legs together and swim by kicking like we had one big fin, and we’d pretend that Ursula was trying to drag us down to the depths of the ocean. How cute is that?
These days I’ve been passing my love of Ariel and her adventure down to my daughter. The Disney movies aren’t her favorite thing in the world (she is much more interested in superheroes of both the Marvel and DC varieties), but she did watch The Little Mermaid in its entirety with me one night, and was very concerned when Ariel’s fin became legs. If I recall, the conversation went something like this:
Her: “Oh no! Ariel can’t swim”Me: “Why can’t she swim?”
Her: “She lost her tail!”
Me: “Yeah, but she has feet now.”
Her: “She’s got to find her tail!”
Me: “But it’s okay, she has feet now!”
Her: “Then she needs shoes! And she has to put on a shirt and be a princess!”
(I was extremely amused by the fact that she didn’t need a shirt until she had legs. Logic, by the littlest Tobin.)
So, in conclusion. Ariel rocks, and I’ll not let anyone tell me otherwise. 😉
For what seems like ages now, I’ve been reading about the bashing of Disney Princesses. The common thread, for the most part, seems to be the poor example that these princesses set for our daughters by teaching them that love is everything, that your man is the most important thing in your life, and that you need a prince to come and rescue you. People have praised the most recent princess, Merida from the Disney-Pixar film, Brave, for being the first and only princess to not give a damn about men and to stand true to herself, her dreams, and her desire to live her own life.
That’s great. Honestly and truly. I thought Brave was a great movie and I loved that Merida was such a headstrong girl with an “I don’t want to be a damn princess!” attitude.
However, as a woman who grew up with Disney movies, who has always loved all of the Disney Princesses, I feel a strong need to defend the others who have been so often picked upon.
Let’s go down the list, shall we?
They’re pretty and they like men! BAD ROLE MODELS GRR RAWR!!!!
Snow White To say that Snow White was a useless woman just waiting for her prince to save her is completely false. When this film starts out, love is the furthest thing from Snow White’s mind. At the start of the film she is simply a sweet girl who happens to be hated by a crazy evil queen. She is chased from her home and finds herself living deep in the woods with the seven dwarfs. She takes care of the dwarfs, teaches them common courtesies and how to clean up after themselves. She is then tricked by the evil queen in disguise into putting herself into a coma-state, which she awakens from by the good prince’s kiss. Okay, yes, in the end it was the prince who saved her. But it could have been anyone, really. Snow White wasn’t a useless woman sitting around and waiting for a handsome man to save her; she just happened to land in trouble because a crazy, evil, witch queen had it in for her, and as a result she wound up in a position where she needed saving. Guess what? Everyone on this planet needs a little saving once in a while. Not a horrible lesson for little girls, in my opinion.
Cinderella Again, we have here a sweet young lady who has seen a lot of hardship…her father passed away and left her to the evils of her truly despicable mother-in-law and spoiled rotten sisters-in-law. She is forced to do all the housework, live in a tiny room in the attic, and never have any kind of life of her own at all. Is it any wonder that the poor girl dreams of a better life, of a loving family built with a loving man? Sure she could have dreamed of other things, but if you’d lost your father at a young age and been saddled with the worst surrogate family imaginable, wouldn’t you dream of real love? So she works her butt off in order to get to the ball (remember, she did a million and one chores all while trying to build her own dress from scratch, before the fairy godmother came along), and when she gets there she falls in love with a man who she doesn’t even realize is the prince. Cinderalla didn’t go chasing after the chance to be royalty…she stumbled into it because she just happened to fall for that particular guy.
Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) Here we have another Snow White, for all intents and purposes. Aurora is chased from her home before she is even a few days old, by a crazed witch who puts an evil curse on her. As a result she grows up in isolation with three fairies pretending to be spinsters. She grows up with no one her age, or even remotely close to her age, and doesn’t even meet a boy until she’s sixteen years old. Is it so surprising that she falls for him? She’s lived her entire life up to this point without even the prospect of romance available to her, and then this handsome man just shows up in her backyard one day. She’s a teenager, for cripes sake. The hormones must have been through the roof!
Ariel (the Little Mermaid) Ariel is one of the princesses who is often talked down about for caring only about her handsome prince. Absolutely not true. When this story begins the last thing on Ariel’s mind is love. She’s a headstrong girl who dares to dream of something bigger for herself. She’s strong and adventurous and dreams of the world above. It just so happens that in her pursuit of that she comes across a man and falls in love with him. Yes, she risks everything for the chance to be with him, and she does some truly stupid things, but remember that this isn’t all about a man. Ariel has been dreaming of the surface world her whole life. Eric was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. And hey, for the record, Ariel fought back in the end. Sure, Eric saved her from Ursula, but not before she saved him from Ursula. That’s teamwork right there, ladies and gentlemen.
Belle (Beauty and the Beast) Okay, I’ll admit it…I’ve seen the comparisons between Belle and a sufferer of Stockholm Syndrome and I couldn’t help but go, “Huh.” But that’s not all there is to this particular Disney Princess. For one thing, she’s smart. She’s the first Disney Princess who is portrayed as a bit of a scholar, always reading and helping her father with his inventions. Second of all, she has convictions about the concept of love and marriage. She turns Gaston down flat out because he’s an ass and she’s not about to get married just because everyone expects it of her. Third, she’s brave. When her father goes missing she rushes off to find him, and selflessly gives herself over to the Beast in order to rescue her dear dad. Okay, the rest of the story may seem a little unlikely, with her falling in love with the person who has been keeping her prisoner, but the whole point of this particular story is that if you look for the good in people you just might find it. Is that really such a terrible lesson?
Jasmine (Aladdin) Like Ariel, here we have a princess who dreams of something more. Come on, one of the first things that we learn about her is that she is rebelling against the traditions that say that she has to marry a prince. She doesn’t believe in marrying for money or power…she believes in marrying for love. How can you complain about that viewpoint? Sure lots of people insist that she never would have fallen for Aladdin if it hadn’t been for the power he possessed (the Genie), but personally I think that that’s just stretching for an argument. The first time we see Jasmine show interest in Aladdin is when he’s a beggar on the streets, sharing his stolen food with a couple of young street urchins. She sees the goodness in him long before he shows up pretending to be a prince.
Pocahontas I’ve never actually heard anyone complain about this particular princess, but for the sake of argument I’ll say this. Pocahontas was a strong warrior with strong convictions. She happened to fall in love with a man during an extremely tumultuous time in her life, and in the end she gave up that love for her convictions and her people. Not exactly a damsel in distress here.
Mulan And the exact opposite of a damsel in distress is Mulan. She’s a young Chinese woman who breaks all the rules about tradition. She doesn’t care about looking pretty, being delicate, or finding a groom. She is a tomboy of the highest order who would rather fight than be rescued. She bravely takes her father’s place in the Chinese army to keep him from getting hurt. She pretends to be a man to enter the army and goes through all the same training and hardships that the men go through. In the end she saves everyone – including the Chinese Emperor himself – from the Hun army. Oh, but she happens to fall in love while she’s handling all of that, so yeah, shame on her I guess.
Tiana (The Princess and the Frog) Yet again we have a young lady for whom love is the absolute last thing on her mind. She has dreamed all her life of opening a restaurant of her very own, a noble, independent kind of dream. She works her ass off to make this dream come true, despite being blocked at every turn by corruption and good old fashioned human indecency. When she’s at her last straw, about to have all of her hard work and dreams ripped away from her, she takes a chance on a talking frog who claims to be a prince. What a horrible person right? For taking a chance when no options were left? For shame. And in the process of righting the wrongs and trying to get back to her true self she, like Mulan, happens to fall in love. Oh the horror.
Rapunzel (Tangled)
And, my friends, before Merida ever landed on the scene we had little Rapunzel, who apparently was completely forgotten about. This girl was locked in a tower for her entire childhood, never knowing the outside world, never knowing any human contact aside from her “mother”. And yet she has the strength, bravery, and cleverness to coerce Flynn into helping her achieve her dream of seeing the “floating lights” in person. She goes on a great adventure, during which she is often the one doing the saving (Flynn would have been arrested several if not for Rapunzel and her frying pan), and in the end she is willing to give up her life and her freedom to save the life of a good man that she believes, at this point, she will never even see again.
And then we have Merida, who apparently is the only Disney Princess worth idolizing because she’s the only one who didn’t fall in love.
Let me just get this last bit straight: I’m not saying that each and every one of the Disney Princess was a perfect, flawless, shining role model for our little girls. What I’m saying (or rather, wondering, I guess) is when did it become such a horrifying thing to fall in love? Most of these princesses weren’t fawning around, waiting for a big strong man to come and whisk them away…they were lovely young women who went through hell and back, followed their dreams and beliefs, and oh, geez, sorry for being human, but I happened to fall in love somewhere along the line, and if I happened to have been rescued at one point or another, sue me, have you never needed help from anyone ever?
I just think that in this day and age we put far too much emphasis on teaching little girls that they need to be strong and independent instead of just letting them be what they want to be. When I was a young girl watching these movies over and over again I can honestly tell you that the romance aspect was not what I was enjoying. I loved Ariel’s adventurous spirit, Belle’s intelligence, and Jasmine’s plucky attitude. I felt sad for Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora for having their lives snatched away from them by the evil people in their lives. I was amazed that Pocahontas and Mulan were strong enough to fight for their people and what they believed was right. Never once did I watch a Disney Princess movie and think, “Yeah, I totally want to be a princess, so I’m going to go and get a bunch of pretty clothes and make-up and sit around and wait for a hot guy to come sweep me off my feet”.
In this, as with many things, I truly believe that we underestimate our little girls. We try to rescue them from dangers that we fabricate in our own minds. And in this, aren’t we ourselves being the “handsome prince” who swoops in, all cocky and self-absorbed, and tries to save the day even if it doesn’t need saving? Ladies and gentlemen, our little girls are not damsels in distress. If we let them be, they can be strong and brave and intelligent and adventurous. They can make their own decisions about the world and what is important to them.
And oh, by the way, if it does happen that “true love” is what’s important to a particular little girl? Deal with it. There are a hell of a lot worse things that they could be focusing their time and energy on, and many muchworserole models they could be idolizing.
Since I’m short on time with no blog post prepared and my NaNoWriMo novel calling, I thought I’d quickly share a couple of my favorite random things at the moment. Do what you will with that. 🙂
– Disney Princess. There has been a lot of flack around Disney Princess lately, what with the vast number of people who claim that the Princesses teach little girls lots of bad lessons about the important things in life (yes, most of the princesses are out looking for their prince, I’ll give you that), but I personally think it’s a major overreaction. I was obsessed with the Disney Princesses my entire life. My cousins and I must have watched The Little Mermaid about 10,000 times – we could quote every single word – and when I first got Beauty and the Beast I would literally watch it to the end and then hit “play” again. And guess what? I became an industrial technologist who hates cooking and cleaning and would rather sit around in jeans and a t-shirt than primp up with pretty clothes and makeup. The lesson is that watching cute, fun, musical movies with lovable characters does not define who you are going to become, even if some of the plot-lines are a little bit misogynistic. Let the kids have their damn cartoons.
– Scentsy. Much to the chagrin of my husband, father, and father-in-law, I’ve climbed about the Scentsy train. I’m not a great lover of the big burners that need a big flat surface to lay on because my house is not abundant in clear flat surfaces. But I love the cute little plug-ins, and some of the scents that are available just make me melt. I also fell in love with the “buddies”, which are cute little stuffed animals that you can stuff a scent pack into. My daughter has an adorable little teddy bear whose scent pack (“Newborn Nursery”) has lasted for over two years now. I recently started collecting the holiday burners to use as decorations, and I haven’t been disappointed yet…they’re so cute!
– My vacuum. This one might sound weird, especially since just two paragraphs ago I mentioned that I hate cleaning. But the fact that I hate cleaning is exactly why I love my vacuum. I’ve gone through a couple of vacuums now – we’re hard on them because we have two cats that refuse to keep their fur on their bodies, and I have an incredibly thick head of hair that is constantly trying to escape my head – and this is the best one I’ve ever had. I spent a little more money than I wanted to in order to get a Shark Navigator Pro, which seemed to have a lot of great reviews, and I couldn’t be happier. The swivel head is great for corners and tight spots, and the extra-long arm and detachable bucket make it super-easy to do stairs. Vacuuming is significantly less of a chore since I splurged on this particular piece of equipment.
– Scrivener. I’ve mentioned this before, but since I’ve been working on my NaNovel I’ve fallen in love with Scrivener all over again. There’s a bit of a learning curve, it’s true, but if you can convince yourself to sit down and just play around with it for a while you’ll find that it’s an extremely versatile tool that can make a writer’s life a hell of a lot easier. I especially love it for the organizational purposes. If I decide that an entire scene is meant for the trash pile, it is super easy to extract it from the story. If I have a dozen characters I can easily organize scenes so that I can locate the particular character I want to deal with today. I haven’t exploited even a quarter of the things that Scrivener can do and it’s still my favorite writing program ever.
– Retro Cartoon Reboots. We all know that reboots aren’t always the greatest things. Re-making a much loved movie, TV show, or video game has great possibility to destroy years and years of dedicated fan base. But in recent years there have been a few reboots of the cartoons that my generation watched when we were kids, and they’ve thus far been amazing. I regularly mention Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Hasbro’s My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and I will continue to do so because both shows take wonderful, beloved old cartoons and turn them into something updated and amazing. They make homage to the old cartoons while still doing their own thing and being fun and cute and lovable.
– Pizzaronis. I know, I know, they’re not exactly health food, are they? But I had some this weekend at my mother’s party and it rekindled my love for the little pizza bundles. I ate these like they were going out of style when I was younger, and I would happily eat them every day even as an adult. YUM.
– NaNoWriMo. Even when I’m doing poorly (I’m two days worth of word count behind already) I still love this yearly challenge. Which is why I am now going to wrap up this post and get back to my new novel. NaNo participants, ho!
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