I Miss the Disney Princess Phase By Megan Vos Although the me of five years ago would never have imagined it possible, I have a confession. I miss the Disney Princess phase. There. I said it. By the time you read this, my older daughter will be ten, and as we approach double digits, I’m veering into some uncharacteristic nostalgia. I leave no memory unexamined as I marvel at the fact that motherhood, the most monumental experience of my life, has been my reality for ten years. I vacillate between the thoughts, It’s only been ten years and it’s already been ten years. And while I would have predicted melancholy about some aspects of the end of my first decade of motherhood, I never imagined I would pine for a spontaneous “Let It Go” sing along. For my older daughter, the princess phase was not about the aspects of Disney that I, a self-avowed feminist, dislike. She didn’t care about being beautiful or obedient. She never espoused Snow White’s naïveté, nor Ariel’s submission. Rather, she took on the entire humanity of whichever princess was her current favorite. Cinderella was her first and deepest love. She would play for hours in her blue ball gown, which, by the end of the phase, was as tattered as Cinderella’s “before the fairy godmother stepped in” dress. Her preschool self-portrait includes her with Jack and Gus, the mice from the movie. She referred to them as her “devoted friends,” using the language of our well-loved “Cinderella” Little Golden Book, and they were a daily part of her play. In this world, I was the wicked stepmother, and when we were out in public she would yell “Stepmother!” and scowl at me in a weird plot twist, where Cinderella was in charge and the sleep-deprived stepmother followed after with a new baby in tow.
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