I felt like Gloria Steinam this morning after reading the Disney, truncated version of Snow White to my daughter. She has a stack of princess books (given to her by my mom). They’re like Cliff Notes–the idiotic messages can be absorbed in an instant. It actually says, “When the dwarfs learned that Snow White could cook, they invited her to stay.” When I finished reading I said to my daughter, “Fuck the dwrarfs.”No, I didn’t really say that, but I did say, in regards to the prince whisking her off on his steed, “How does she know she’ll even like him? They never even spoke to each other.”
“Yeah!” my almost four-year-old said.
“He could be a total loser. He could be like, ‘Hi Snow White, wanna’ ride my horse.’ I realized I was speaking in a retarded-sounding voice and stopped. “Why would she go off with a stranger who did nothing more than kiss her? I mean, is he stable? Does he work or just live off his parents? What are his table manners like? His taste in music? Why must there be so many adverbs in these books?” “I just don’t know,” she sighed then asked me to read Cinderella, then the Little Mermaid and finally, the token minority, Jasmine, from Aladdin. I’m so sick of these chicks with their shy laughter and porn bodies, but I keep reading, avoiding explanation.
My daughter developed this passion for commercial characters at around two. She actually has clothes with cartoon characters on them, something I always thought was so white trashy, but here we are. One thing I don’t allow in the house (okay maybe a few times) are foods with cartoons on them. The little shits are always attatched to items whose first ingredient is corn syrup. Why can’t they put Elmo on tofu, Dora on almonds, Little Einsteins on garbanzo beans? Otherwise I don’t protest too much. The toons, especially the princesses make her so happy, and I’m not the kind of mom who only allows wooden toys and books about bi-racial eagles with two proud fathers. However, the other day gave me pause. We were at the playground and E and I were in the hut pretend-cooking when all of the sudden her eyes widened and she screamed, “Dora!” She began stomping her feet and pointing and I looked for someone who had on a Dora backpack, a t-shirt, a doll, shoes, but there was nothing.
“Dora!” she said again, and I looked at the slides, a girl sliding into her nanny’s arms. A short, Mexican nanny with bobbed hair and bangs: Dora.
“No sweetie,” I whispered. “That’s not Dora. We don’t know her name. It could be Louise or Mary.”
“Louise?”
She really did look like Dora, if Dora was fifty-five and taking care of twin blonde girls who kept shouting, “Look what I can do! Look what I can do!” A Dora who had stopped her adventures and explorations and spent her time parked at a playground bench, grinding up flax to sprinkle on the twins’ tofu dogs.
“That’s not Dora,” I said again, cringing at the way her face fell at this news. She didn’t look entirely convinced.
Was I supposed to explain to her that not all Mexicans are Dora, just as not all Asians are her friend, Austin’s, dad? I’m fairly good at blending in lessons, hiding them like sweet potatoes in pancakes, but this is hard turf.
And in the end, the toons will win. Why? Awhile back in San Francisco we went to a funeral for a baby whose name was Thomas. Every time his name was spoken during the service my then two and a half year old daughter yelled, “Thomas? Thomas! Thomas the Train!”
We said, “Shhh.” We said, “No not the train. He’s a boy. A boy.”
Later that night we did our reading routine in the living room. I read a book to her and when I finished she fetched me another. She sat on dad’s lap and I read to both of them, “But where is green sheep?”
“Where is Thomas?” she asked.
The question brought tears to my eyes. Andy and I exchanged glances. What do we say? When do you start telling the truth?
“Oh, sweetie,” I said. “Thomas had to go.”
She looked at me with her mouth open. “Oh, he had to go?”
“He had to go,” I said.
“He’s okay,” Andy said.
“Yeah,” she said. “He’s okay.”
There are a lot of women at San Francisco playgrounds who look like Dora because…
Cinderella can suck it because…
Thomas is dead because…
I don’t always want to fill in the blanks.