high heels, big ideals

My four-year-old daughter (Grumpy Child no. 2) sat me down recently and said that while she loved me picking her up from school, she’d prefer it if I’d wear high heels. To be fair, ours is the type of school where a lot of mummies do wear high heels to pick up, particularly those smart ones with the lovely red soles.

I laughed off her comment, I put it down to the precociousness of four-year-olds, but then the other day on the way to school, we passed a young woman. From my point of view, behind the wheel, she was very young, ‘first job, trying too hard’ young. She was bedecked in a pencil skirt, a fitted jacket with a faux fur lining (it had to be, right?), and sauntering along in very high heels.

‘Look!’ squeals No. 2, with the excitement normally reserved for passing puppies.

‘She looks lovely,’ breathes No. 3.

‘She looks posh,’ says No. 1, who likes to know these things.

‘What’s posh?’

‘Posh means very pretty,’ says No 1.

‘Do I look posh?’ I tease from the front.

‘NO!’ they groan unanimously.

‘The only reason she looks so posh is that she works in an office,’ I say.

‘I wish you worked in an office,’ sighs No. 2.

‘Yes! Then we could come and visit you!’ says No. 3, whose only experience of The Office was when Hardworking Husband took them in on Christmas Eve one year. They were entertained by Mr Lollipop and then watched DVDs with the secretaries. Clearly, my girls believe that this is what Hardworking Husband hurries off to every day.

I never expected my girls to be quite so girly. They notice every time I paint my nails, every new dress I wear – which poses a problem when one is trying to slip one past Hardworking Husband. No.s 2 & 3 measure their hair growth almost every night in the bath, because it’s longer when it’s wet, and everybody knows that only boys (and mummy) have short hair. This feminine streak doesn’t come from me, so where did they learn it? Is it too much Disney, too many Barbie-inspired stories where the heroine is always beautiful and wears high heels? Am I exposing them too young to empty ideals that will translate into impossibly high standards, against which they will measure themselves for the rest of their lives?

Or are they just girls, who love pretty things, and soon enough they will outgrow fairies and princesses and before I know it they will be trying to pierce their noses upstairs in the bathroom and be walking around in ‘AC/DC’ t-shirts?

I think so. Just as they grow out of The Night Garden (thank God!), they will move on from this current Pink Princess Paradise. And they don’t look at passing girls and think, ‘Skinny bitch, she’s clearly not had kids!’, they think she looks pretty. And she does.