RAISING A DAUGHTER IS THE WORST... ...EXCEPT WHEN IT'S THE BEST

I can pinpoint the moment our daughter began transforming into a stereotypical girl. She was two, and her mother and I took her to Ariel’s Grotto, in Disneyland.

- Tom Bissell

The restaurant traffics in so-called character dining, meaning the tables are careered by marquee Disney characters—princesses, in our case.

Since well before we had a child, my girlfriend and I considered ourselves enlightened on the subject of gender binaries. The notion that boys are naturally one way and girls another seemed like bullshit, to use a technical term. Naturally, natural: These are words designed not to explain but to compel. Not every boy loves pointing an imaginary M16, and not every girl squeals when a tiara is placed on her head. To insist that any child behave in ways that to them feel wrong is to lay the first bricks of what will become an adult prison cell.

We thus established a household of mild gender neutrality: Yellow-and-gray decorative scheme in her room. Unisex clothes whenever possible. As many tractors and superheroes as dolls and plushy kittens. Highly gendered birthday or Christmas gifts from relatives that went unopened. And absolutely no princesses, at any time, under any circumstance. We’re Americans, goddammit: sic semper tyrannis. For her first Halloween, she was Han Solo.

But then, in Ariel’s Grotto, as the coiffed and ball-gowned women began emerging from their lair, something happened to our daughter. She couldn’t stop looking at them. Couldn’t stop touching their dresses. Couldn’t stop talking about them afterward.

The parent-friends with whom we discussed what happened all had some reliably structuralist explanation. Patriarchal culture had seeped into her brain, you see, as in a gas leak. Or she was following the cues of the other, less evolved little girls. Or she was responding to the novel sight of women in a commanding position, confidently displaying their power.