At five, power is illusory. Someone tells you when to go to bed, what to eat (and please leave your toys in the playroom when you come to the table), and sometimes even what to wear. When I look at it in that light, it’s not surprising that my daughter’s favorite toy is her sword.
For the last two weeks, she’s been travelling around the house and yard entirely via acrobatics. She can turn a cartwheel and stick the landing while picking up her sword mid-turn. Warriors need to train rigorously, so we’ve rigged a complicated fighting machine in the front yard. It involves rope, milk bottles, and water-filled buckets. She can make that water bucket bleed out in 2 minutes flat.
Our biggest argument recently? I’m refusing to promise her a real sword and a ticket to Paris on her seventeenth birthday, so that she can be a musketeer.
This is the part where I cringe, and admit she’s been watching Barbie and the Three Musketeers almost daily. And when she was sick? Twice in one day.
Move over, She Ra, Barbie has come to town.
If you’d asked me five years ago, I might have told you that Barbie would never darken our doors. (OK, maybe not. I’m pretty sure my mom has my old Malibu Barbie packed under a guest bed somewhere.) But my shaky feminist cred makes me think that I should have banned Barbie. After all, her measurements are all wrong. And she’ll make my daughters afraid of math. And creative play? Right out the window. Right?
Let me tell you about the engineering involved in the three draft attempts at that fighting machine, ‘mkay? Not to mention the duct tape.
And even though I cringe about the movie, I’m making a mental note to call around and find out how old you have to be to start fencing lessons. Or maybe Aikido. Because my daughter? She is powerful. Even if she can’t bring her sword to the dinner table.
I don’t know, if it got my 3.5 year old away from the princess, marrying scenarios and on to a justice seeking Musketeer I’d be showing her the Barbie Musketeer movie. Hmmm, must check it out.
My five year old started out as Superman at age 2. That lasted about 2 years, and she’s hit everything from Tinkerbell to She Ra, and a few others in between. She had a few months of being wedding-obsessed, but interestingly enough, that was because my husband showed her our wedding video in a fit of entertainment desperation than any princess stories. And no princes at the wedding– she was content to marry her little sister.
Ironically, starting yesterday, Barbie was out, and Encyclopedia Brown was in. We’re all about solving the case, helping the victim, and riding your bike to the scene of the crime. Oh, and also the twenty-five cents a day plus expenses.