warning: rambley
We were given several awesome kids movies recently. If you are a SAHM, you know this is really a bigger treat for you than it is the kids. There were a couple great ones and then theirs the "Princess Sing Along"...
I'm not a huge fan of Disney Princess in general but we don't avoid them like they're diseased. My girls have like 5 of those baby princess dolls- just the right tottable size! They have the giant princess story book from one of their adopted aunts. We have seen a couple Disney princess movies...sorta. We've seen pieces of Little Mermaid, Brave, and the snipets on this new sing-along. Let me real, some of those would still give Me nightmares.
Let's get back to the sing along. {note: there's really nothing wrong with the movie- this is just a personal quirk} Watching it the first time, I just thought it was awkward. Having grown up with all these movies, I knew the context. My girls {and sadly Jamin who was stuck watching it as well} have no idea what any of these unrealistically beautiful singing women are much less their assumed gentlemen friends, or so we assume even though most of whom these women only met moments before dancing & lusting after gazing at one another. I digress again...
The song. The song I'm trying to get to is one from Mulan II. With having seen only the clip of this song, I can only assume...and Google. This song was birthed in the heart of these 3 sisters under the tyrany of China rule around 200 BC when China was practicing Heqin (Ho-chin) or marriage alliances. Basically, the Chinese Emperor marries off a "princess" (usually a pseudo-princess or concubine whom he had never met before, some heqin princesses were at least noblewomen of recent imperial descent, but had no direct kinship) to an aggressive ethnic minority chieftain or ruler. The theory was that in this arranged marriage the would cease all aggressive/rebellious actions toward China.
In the movie, Mulan {feminist who rebelled against tradition} is helping escort 3 "princesses" to their "aggressive ethnic minority chieftain or ruler" soon-to-be-fiance's. Ironic, ehh? The clip we got to "sing along" with was the "I wanna be like other girls" song. Now with all of this background, heck to the YES, we want these sisters to be like other girls! Not sex-trafficked for "peace" between nations. Do you think I stopped and explained all this to my month-away-from-being-5-year-old? Uuuuhhhh, no. She only heard pretty painted sisters having fun, tossing 'pointy shoes' in the air, and celebrating desirable freedom. What did I tell her an hour later when she was prancing through the kitchen, finding things to doll herself up with, while singing, "I just wanna be like other girls!"?
Stop it.
Well, not exactly. I was quickly taken back and suddenly said, "No Mags! We don't want you to be like other girls." She looked at me like I was crazy and must have missed the compelling performance the geisha dolls gave. She told me again, the line she was singing to reassure me it must be okay since I had allowed her to watch the song. I scooped her up to have a lil...moment. "Maggie, we do not want to be like other girls. We want to be exactly who God made us to be. We are all different and that's good. He wants to use us all differently." I thought that was pretty compelling. Or at least more compelling than the geisha song. Nope. "But mom, why did those princess want to be like all the other girls?" Deep breath, "They don't know Jesus." To this my husband snickers behind me. Mags replies, "oh" with a solemn face. "They don't know God loves them and they haven't met Jesus yet. God wants us to look different than the rest of the world."
We continued our conversation and I attempted to explain to Maggie that this was just one of the reasons I had discouraged her from picking that movie to watch. She reluctantly agreed that I probably couldn't correct every doctrinally wrong thing in the movie at this time, with her being so young and all. I was hoping to feel like victorious. But instead, I felt rather defeated. Having let that falsehood into her mind. You can't take that way. It will always be part of the mold that is Magdalene Reese. What other lies had satan snuck into her tiny brain in that 20 minutes of entertainment?
I know I can't live in fear or guard against everything satan is through my kids' way but I hope that God's truth sunk in deeper than that lie.
update: Mags had now created a song entitled, "I don't wanna be like other girls..." to the same tune and still including the cute lyrics about 'pointy shoes'. LOL
