It really started to hit me a few days ago. You and I were walking down the street and I pointed to the picture on the front page in the newspaper stand.
“Do you know who that is?” I asked.
Beaming with pride that you knew the answer, you looked up and said, “President Obama!”
“That’s right!” I congratulated you. “President is a very important job. Would you like to be president some day?”
Then, turning to me with a look as if I had just made the silliest suggestion ever, you laughed and said, “Daddy … I can’t be president! I’m not a boy!”
When I asked you what you did want to be, you said with all the certainty in the world, that you wanted to be … a princess.
Uh-oh.
And not just any princess. You like Arielle, and Cinderella, and Jasmine, and Aurora, but you really wanted to be Belle. And I had to be the Beast.
You know the one – where the helpless princess has only one singular path to happiness, and it revolves entirely around winning the affection of her Prince Charming. I thought those stories were lovely and cute before I met you. But when I began to realize the lesson that they were teaching in the context of what you might take from them, that all changed.
It’s not easy to avoid that message. It’s everywhere. We can’t walk through a store without finding some imagery of the glamorous princesses beckoning to you. Television – even a lot of children’s television – is dripping with it. Even when there are attempts to show strong women and girls, they’re often still objectified. (I thought we were safe watching Dora the Explorer on Nickelodeon, until the promos came on for the Winx Club ― the show about a band of superhero fairies with Barbie doll bodies flying around in tight tube tops and booty shorts.)
大統領になりたい?と聞いたら、パパ、私、男の子じゃないからなれない、じゃあ、何になりたいの?と聞いたら、お姫様、と。
ディズニーその他の媒体で、女の子、というか 女性はこうあるべき、こうあると幸せになる、というメッセージでこの世の中満ち溢れているわけですね。
アメリカ人女性で、日本では、大きくなったらお嫁さんになりたいという女の子が多くいのに絶望して、アメリカに帰った人がいましたが、こうした問題は、グローバルな問題なわけなのに不思議ですね。
日本人もアメリカ人も、同じ人間として、男女平等を説くのはいいが、アメリカと比較して説教垂れるアメリカ人というのは大抵は、リベラルでもなんでもなく、その実、植民地での統治者のような意識をもっていて、根っこではレイシストの場合が多いですね。