Today, I found a caterpillar in the yard, munching on the kale.

[conuly]

So I brought it in the house to show the girls. Mostly it was freaked out and curled in a ball, but after Evangeline left it started to explore my palm in classic inchworm fashion, making a lowercase n and then stretching out. So I pointed this out to Ana - "Look, it moves in a really funny way".

Ana had more sympathy than I did (I was all for putting it on the windowsill for the birds, I mean, it was EATING the KALE, but I eventually agreed she could bring it out to the weeds in the front of the house instead) and said very carefully "No, Connie, it doesn't. That's just the way caterpillars are supposed to move".

And of course she's right, although that's so word-for-word my views on neurodiversity and related topics that I spent several minutes afterwards wondering if I'd ever explicitly stated this to her. I feel as though I must have, but for the life of me I can't imagine where it's come up except, maybe, in talking about her hair and skin as compared to "Princesses",who of course have long, straight blond hair and the skin that matches. I watched in consternation and dismay the day she went on Starfall to design a story about a girl who looks like "her" and picked the palest skin and lightest, longest, straightest hair she could. I just didn't know how to react! Still, clearly something about the message is sticking, no matter how she's heard it, if she can apply it to caterpillars.

Comments

[feebeeglee.livejournal.com]

My son always makes himself green FWIW.

[siderea]

o_O

You do understand the difference, yes?

[feebeeglee.livejournal.com]

What are you implying?

[siderea]

That you missed the point.

[feebeeglee.livejournal.com]

Ah.

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my painfully pale little celt with ruler straight hair always goes for the dark skin/weird color/curly hair combo on that

[conuly]

Well, that's actually a little gratifying to hear.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid there were no computers, so I couldn't make virtual dolls of myself, but I usually drew myself with long straight black hair rather than my own white-blonde wavy hair. Probably this had something to do with my dislike of crayon-yellow, which was the closest option available for my own hair-color, but mostly it was because I longed for Asian hair, a waterfall of silken black all the way down to my feet like a Chinese princess.

What I say is, don't make an 'issue' of it, or take it as a sign that your girlies are disowning themselves. It's just human nature - and more especially, child nature - to want whatever one doesn't happen to have.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Shades of the doll test.

As if princesses don't.... Take her to Aida.

[conuly]

Indeed.

That's why I'm so in love with The Apple-Pip Princess. It's a great story besides that, but I can't say that wasn't a big part of why I bought it at nearly full price.

[siderea]

I just didn't know how to react!

I'm not sure this is a good answer, but I'd be inclined to say, "No, your hair is prettier than that. Pick the pretty one." and point to the hair more like hers.

Of course, if someone had done that to me at her age, I might have bit them. OTOH, I wasn't picking straight long pale hair as "mine".

[conuly]

Her hair is pretty, too. It's gorgeous, she and Evangeline both (although I don't mention that because when she's in that mood but feeling more practical about it she says she wants her SISTER'S hair, Eva having curly but not, as Ana calls it, "poofy" hair), but she doesn't react well to hearing it. I think she thinks we're condescending or obviously trying to talk her out of it or something. I don't know.

[siderea]

I think she thinks we're condescending or obviously trying to talk her out of it or something. I don't know.

When I was her age, I reacted poorly (q.v. "biting") to people being "complimentary" when they insisted on evaluating me in terms of values that I repudiated, most especially "prettiness" and "cuteness". I was tolerably OK with "beautiful", but nobody ever says to a small girl child that she is beautiful, and in any event, my attractiveness, as if I were an object existing to please the aesthetic tastes of others around me and affirm their cultural norms of what a female should look like, is not and has never been an acceptable topic of discussion to initiate with me. Not from a construction worker hooting, "HEEEY BAAABEEEE", and not from a matron cooing, "OH HOW CUTE".

Yeah, at 3.5yo I was the world's shortest feminist.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

uck, caterpillars (because I lack the brainpower to comment on the more serious aspect of this post).