Protecting Our Princesses - A Male Chauvinist View

She may be a bit more militant
but the shoes still match the bow!

Every Halloween it's the same. THE most popular costume for girls is some sort of princess outfit. There is, however, increasing pressure on parents these days to teach our daughters to reject the "princess paradigm" for women and adopt what these self-appointed "experts" call a more"kick-ass" role model.

Well, perhaps some of these would-be cultural paradigm shifters missed it, but some of Disney's princesses were pretty "kick-ass" in their own right. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for teaching our daughters to be self-assured, independent of spirit and self-reliant. We tried to teach our own daughter that when she was growing up and I think she learned the lessons well. I'm very proud of her independence and her feisty self-assurance. She's a pistol, I'm here to tell you.

At the same time, we need to be careful not to make men out of our girls as we try to teach them to become more durable women. The trick is not to train out of them, the very biological characteristics that make them who and what they are. 

Women's contributions to our world and to the quality of life in our world are unique. We need that ability to nurture, that instinct to protect the sanctity of the family circle and that ability to find win/win solutions. Men don't do that so well. We're more about kicking buttocks and taking names. We're more linear in the way we approach life. Point us at a problem and we roll straight over it. But ask us to figure out what everyone around us needs to make them happy and we're lost. That is a gift, not given the male of the species in any great quantity.  It is a uniquely feminine gift. It is the example of our mom's and wives and sweethearts that keep us males from driving straight over the goal-directed precipice that lies at the end of our distinctly male style of thinking.

Feminists like to say funny things like "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."  Perhaps that's true in some sense, though I seriously doubt it. The important thing is that a man needs a woman to make him truly a man. That's no shame to a man, just the way God made us. Together, a man and woman form a complete person. It's not just that the physical parts fit. It's the heads and hearts as well. It turns out that men and women are symbiotic creatures. We're each given half the equation.  Call me a romantic, but I have found this to be the truth. Were I to lose my soul mate, I might go on, but something will always be missing until we are reunited at the end of it all.

It may sound chauvinist and you may call me a stupid male if you wish, but we need our princesses - not as helpless objects, but as partners in the struggle of life. Someone once noted that Eve was made, not from a bit of Adam's skull to be above him or from his foot to be beneath him, but from his rib to stand at his side. You women are the reason we men willingly rush to stand between the dragons and our families.

And if the dragons do manage to get past us, we need to know they still have Mama to deal with.  So, what's wrong with that?

© 2013 by Tom King