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I love that I have received links to this Goldie Blox ad over 20 times this week from friends, family, and readers. Y’all know what I am all about!

I’ve been following the growth of Goldie Blox since their Kickstarter campaign launched just over a year ago. And they’ll be all of the Goldie Blox books/toys (and this rad More Than Just a Princess hoodie) under the tree for my daughters on Christmas morning.

If I’m really wearing my feminist hat, I’d jump on the bandwagon of some other critical writers that have critiqued the company’s use of one of the most chauvinistic, patriarchal songs out there (Girls by The Beastie Boys) in the ad. But I think culture jamming is awesome, and the new lyrics are badass:

Girls.
You think you know what we want, girls.
Pink and pretty it’s girls.
Just like the 50’s it’s girls.

You like to buy us pink toys
and everything else is for boys
and you can always get us dolls
and we’ll grow up like them… false.

It’s time to change.
We deserve to see a range.
‘Cause all our toys look just the same
and we would like to use our brains.

We are all more than princess maids.

Girls to build the spaceship,
Girls to code the new app,
Girls to grow up knowing
they can engineer that.

Girls.
That’s all we really need is Girls.
To bring us up to speed it’s Girls.
Our opportunity is Girls.
Don’t underestimate Girls.

Also, I am admittedly disappointed that the second book/project in the series is about a princess pageant. It’s like when Pixar finally released a movie with a female lead (after TWELVE movies with a male lead), and the character was a princess. Look, I’d be fine with the princess stuff if that weren’t the primary role being shoved down our girls’ throats. The male leads in the Pixar movies have been toys, bugs, robots, fish, cars, super heroes, etc. Why did the first female lead have to be a princess?

And that’s how I’m feeling about the Goldie Blox princess book. Why when this company is clearly trying to bring awareness to the lack of opportunity for our girls would it use one of the fundamental mainstream tropes to do so?

And may I once again recommend that everyone read Peggy Orenstein’s “Cinderella Ate My Daughter“? I MAY!

And it’s a problem going the other direction as well. Just the other day, my colleague was relaying that her three-year old son had selected the princess toothbrush during his visit to the dentist. The nurse replied, “Oh, you must like looking at the pretty girls, uh?”

WHY ON EARTH ARE WE IMPOSING SEXUALITY ON OUR LITTLE BOYS? Maybe he likes the princesses for all the reasons that little girls seem to like them? Because they’re shiny and sparkly and wear really fun clothes. Toddlers and preschoolers are human magpies! Of course they like things that glitter. We just tell our boys that that’s not okay (which KILLS me). And I feel so lucky to be living in a community where many of my peer parents with sons are not afraid to let their boys love the glitz as much as they may love trucks, blocks, etc.

My goal has always been to give children the broadest, most flexible view of their identity so that they can truly figure out where they fall in that spectrum. (I wrote this over two and a half years ago and it still rings so very true).

Fundamentally I am on board with what Goldie Blox is trying to do. And I’m high-fiving Debbie Sterling for this recent quote in The New York Times:

It’s O.K. to be a princess. We just think girls can build their own castles too.

Amen, sister. And if you don’t dig princesses, then that’s a-okay, too!