The Loss of Little Girlhood

While waiting for my optometry appointment yesterday, I was reading a magazine, and came across an article speculating on Prince William and Duchess Kate's unborn baby's gender. Apparently, while no official gender has been announced, people think they'll be having a girl. I thought the article was cute, if a little bit superfluous, until I came to a paragraph talking about what it would mean for William and Kate to have a girl, and I was angry.

A line in the article detailed how as soon as the baby is born- let me repeat that- as a one-day-old, newborn baby-she would be a "fashion icon." 

Putting aside how utterly ridiculous it is to call a tiny human who can't even roll over yet a fashion icon, and believe me, I could write pages on that, there is something even more disturbing about that sentence, about that idea. 

The underlying current of the climate this baby, if it is a girl, would be born into is already based on how she would be dressed and how she would look, before she has a chance to take her first steps or say her first word. Tell me that isn't sick.

This illustrates a very ugly trend I've noticed, both in my life and in the media, of both the heavy emphasis society puts on the beauty if little girls and the over-sexualization of them. Just last month, while eating dinner with my mother at a restaurant, we witnessed a woman stick her toddler-aged daughter on the table and announce loudly, "Look, she's going to grow up to be a stripper!" And, as though her little girl was a doll, proceeded to make her squat up and down while sticking the child's butt out as the rest of the family laughed. 

Needless to say, my mom and I were horrified. 

And not long before that incident, I saw a picture of Beyonce's and Jay Z's daughter, who is only three years old, with incredibly literate caption of  "When ur mom is Beyonce, but u look lik Jay Z's lil brother." Not even four years old, and she's already being judged on how beautiful she is. Below is a picture of the little girl on a website made for petitions to better the world and stop injustice.

Because, of course,  this is such a pressing and important injustice in this world.

Yeah, I know that there are wars and murders and rape and racism in the world, but hey, let's worry about Blue Ivy's hair.

A definite symptom of the emphasis of girls's appearances at a young age (and it's still an issue for the rest of their lives, and is a lifelong battle for us to find acceptance, from ourselves as well as others,  but I digress.), is the absolute atrocity known as TLC's "Toddler's and Tiaras", or maybe, just the children's glitz pageant industry in general.

Here's a picture of  Eden Woods. She is 9 years old in this photo.

Even worse than the caked on make-up, fake teeth, and hair extensions plastered on this child and the other little girls of the glitz pageant world, are the costumes, which are often horrendously inappropriate for the children's ages. The only time I have seen a public uproar about it is when pageant mom Wendy Dickey put her 3-year-old daughter, Paisley, in a costume based off of a prostitute from the movie "Pretty Woman."

Yeah, you heard that right.

Paisley, who is too young to understand what she's wearing. 

From the movie "Pretty Woman".

I think the reason this got so much attention is because of the connection to the very famous movie. There are plenty of other highly inappropriate costumes given to little girls.  Here are a few of them that a cursory google search brought up.

I am sick to my stomach when I see these pictures, and those making fun of anybody's appearance, especially that of a young child. It breaks my heart to think of the pressure little girls living in this twisted world face, and it's hard not to feel a little bit helpless to fix it.

We can't change what some idiots who are pathetic enough to be living vicariously through their children or attacking toddlers beauty on the internet, but what we can do is follow Ghandi's advice and "Be the change we wish to see in the world." We can build up out daughters or other young girls in out lives and teach them to be confident and strong. We can let them be little girls and get muddy and play and wear little-girl clothes instead of prematurely hurtling them into the tumultuous frenzy of being a woman in today's beauty-centric society.

And when she grows up, she will be a stronger human being because of it.

So to answer the question that started this: What should Will and Kate expect if there baby is a girl?

They can expect a lovable, strong, amazing person, just as incredible as their son.