... is why the "pretty girls" in the movies are blondes.
My immediate impulse was to protest that it simply is not true. For example, Beanie's given name is also the title of a movie starring Audrey Hepburn.
At the time, Beanie and her best friend, Pants, were watching a Barbie movie ("The Princess and the Pauper"). Which, for the record, is not nearly as bad as it sounds.
Beanie and Pants wanted to know why the princess had blonde hair, and the pauper had brown hair, like theirs. Of course, both princess and pauper were Barbies - also, the strong resemblance is critical to the story's plot... - but I think Beanie and Pants, at the ages of almost 7 and 7 years old, have caught wind of the blonde obsession of American (and perhaps, globalized) popular culture and it is making them mad.
Which, I have to admit, warms the cold, cold cockles of my feminist heart.
See? Even a Barbie movie can become a teaching moment.
Later, I pointed out to Beanie that although the makers of movies often try to make the movies look "real," even when set in places like Hogwarts, in fact, they are not real and barely resemble "real" life. After all, if the movies were real, then there should be not only girls with brown hair, but also girls who looked like me ("Asian") and girls who looked like her (with mixed heritage) and girls with dark skin as well as girls with blonde hair.
My children of mixed background look so different. My boy is brown (tan, really), with brown eyes and favors his father--despite the fact that he has my color (I am black and white). My daughter, however, is blonde, has very fair skin,rosy-cheeks and green eyes. She favors me with regard to looks, while looking more like my white husband in complexion. Genetics are cool that way. My daughter, strangely enough,(and at the young age of three and a half) seems to want to have dark hair like Mommy and often says: "Why don't have I hair like yours and Doara's Mommy?" I guess main stream media hasn't quite gotten to her yet, and I hope it never does.
ReplyDeleteMe, too! Or that she grows up as a critical consumer of popular culture.
ReplyDelete