We saw Enchanted this weekend. Two families, four girls. I had no real expectations and apparently the movie is getting decent reviews. Now I’m always up for a spoof on fairy tales, as you may guess. The girls sat in their own row, of course, as the three 10 year olds are outgrowing their parents – and the 7 year old wants to be one of the big girls, so she sucks it up at the scary scenes. She ends up climbing into our bed in the middle of the night, processing the wicked stepmother, poisoned apples, and being thrown down bottomless pits into Times Square, in a fitful REM slumber. Well, that would scare me, too.
In any event, I have to say while there were some laugh out loud scenes and parodies with lots of dancing and singing, in the end the message was pretty much the same. Princesses are rescued by princes and live happily ever after. I suppose Hollywood wouldn’t get the big bucks if the directors ended such a movie on a sour note, but the movie doesn’t score any points for me in debunking the myths of saccharine (and heterosexual) romance. (As an aside, there was a research study that showed that if you educate people about both truths and myths about a topic, that many people will remember the myths as “truth” later.)
As the credits rolled on screen I looked at my girls and said: Kids, don’t believe any of it.
Now maybe I’ve become a pessimist, or maybe I’ve seen one too many forlorn 30 year old women in my therapy practice lamenting that they will be alone forever, that there must be something inherently wrong with them that they haven’t found the right guy, and instead launch into unrewarding relationships just to prove they can be in one.
I think I worry about my youngest daughter the most. I wonder how her innocent mind is being molded by the fact that she’s little, always in catch-up mode, but strives to be cool and all-knowing like her sister (who is hardly all-knowing, yet). Maybe it is the birth order issue… the younger child gets more breaks, coddled, resorts to joking and humor for attention, sees more precocious shows than her sister ever did at the same age, and so on. But my little Adele also is just temperamentally unique. She constantly moves, spins or twirls. She was never able to self-sooth, or find a blankie or teddy she couldn’t part with, or even suck her thumb. No, she has a circadian rhythm all her own, needs little sleep compared to the rest of us, and inevitably climbs down off her top bunk to end up in someone’s bed. She used to sleep with her sister all the time, until Rosie got too long and needed full covers all to herself. Now Adele wanders into our bed with some – in her mind – legitimate and true reason:
“I hear mice in the wall.”
“I’m afraid there is someone outside.”
“I had a bad dream and can’t get it out of my mind even when I try. And I’m TRYING!”
“My nose is stuffy.”
And so on.
She falls immediately asleep next to a warm body but even in her sleep she moves and kicks and tosses. Which keeps me up. And I’m not one of these “family bed” type of people. So I walk her back to her bunk ladder, or lay down on the guest bed with her for the 5 minutes it takes her to drop into a secure sleep, or throw a sleeping bag on the floor.
What might this bode for her future? I guess my fear is she’ll be one of those women who will always need someone for the physical security, which is basically what all these fairly tales brainwash into little girls.
I’m not predicting the future and I don’t want to weave a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I do wonder. I even have thought of asking the 30-something women I see whether they had a blankie. It’s a theory anyway.
