Barbies, American Girl Doll clothes and our own clothes is what covered most of my floor that I shared with two sisters. I remember trips to the American Girl Store in Chicago and drooling over everything I just had to have for my doll. My mom got the holiday Barbie every year from our dad, which also turned into our gift. Disney movies were also watched during our special picnics. We would lay out a blanket in the living room and our mom would go to extra measures to make the least sloppiest meal she could for us while we sat at our picnic while watching princess movie after princess movie.
Considering there were three of us girls, we were bound to grow up in the princess culture. Surrounded by pink, love, fashion, dolls, fantasy, playing home and more. We had all the typical toys you would expect to find in a house of three female children. From the word cloud in the article called, "Word Cloud: How Toy Ad Vocabulary Reinforces Gender Stereotypes," the main words that popped up were love, magic, fun, girl, party, hair and mommy. And I completely 100 percent believe this. I remember keeping the boxes that my Barbie's came in because they were so pretty, pink and had a lot of sparkle on them.
When I was little, I didn't understand how different my parents were, but I certainly do not. They went through a terrible and destructive divorce and four years later, they still find every excuse to harp on the other or to say their two cents no matter what the subject is. The best thing about the huge differences is that while my sisters and I did grow up in a princess culture, our dad was there to bring our little feet down from the clouds of Barbie Wonderland onto the concrete of a basketball court, grass of a soccer field and into gyms.
My dad would spend countless hours of his time encouraging us to get outside, play a sport and to stay active and in shape. He even built us a soccer net, two balance beams, two sets of bars and bought us a trampoline for our backyard. He did everything he could to provide us with the resources we needed to get outside and play. He also always encouraged us to play with the children in our neighborhood. I have loved sports and have always been competitive my whole life, so I tended to veer towards the boys of the neighborhoods.
Around the fourth grade, I went through an interesting phase. I remembering spending hours just drop kicking a football across the street while hanging out with my three boy friends from down the street. I day dreamed about trying out for the middle school football team and I wanted the boys to treat me as one of them. I started to reject the everyday girly activities and I really wanted to be Batman for Halloween that year. I think I remember this stage in my life so clearly because I felt like I went in the complete opposite direction of what I was supposed to be doing. Although I kept most of these feelings to myself, I really wanted to be more like a boy than a girl at that time.
I think the princess culture overload and the fact that my dad was such a pusher to get us to be active made me reject the princess culture for a period of time. I did go through a little tomboy phase, but once I was in the sixth grade, I learned a little more about myself and grew into my skin.
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