My Daughter Tamed My Inner Tomboy

Hair styling with my princess

From the age of 7, I drove my mother crazy with my tomboyish ways. I despised dresses and the color pink. My dreams of becoming a princess were replaced with the glories of knighthood. I was often more fascinated with my brother’s toys than my own. And I absolutely loved to get covered in mud. As I grew more and more comfortable as a tomboy, my mother’s dreams of beauty nights, clothes shopping, and other more girly activities went up in smoke!

As a woman now, I am still stuck in some of my old tomboy habits. I am much more comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt than a dress or skirt. I still cringe at the sight of high heels and like to take pink in small doses. I have yet to start wearing makeup regularly (and really don’t know how to wear the infernal stuff anyway).

However, I am slowly getting more in tune with my feminine side, thanks to my 5-year-old daughter. My little princess is just that, a princess. She loves everything frilly, lacy, sparkling, pink, and purple. She has a multitude of purses, putting my single purse (I finally broke down and bought my first one 2 years ago) to shame! She has tutus, high heels, tiaras, and jewelry boxes full of costume jewelry. She even asked for her first makeup set for Christmas last year.

Now I find myself learning to become a hairstylist, makeup artist, manicurist, and fashionista little by little. We play dress up together. We spend hours trying out new hairstyles. And I am even getting better at painting fingernails and toenails. Maybe when she gets older, we will learn to put on makeup together . . . something I swore I was never going to do until the day I died!

It is funny how life can change you. It is even more ironic that it took a little girl, my own flesh and blood, to start making me more comfortable with being a woman. It is a lesson I should be teaching her, not the other way around. Yet, I know deep down that I had to learn that lesson first before I could ever hope to teach it to my daughter.

When we first become parents we worry about how we are going to teach our children to become responsible, caring adults. Little do we realize that parenting is NOT a one way street. We learn just as much from our children as they learn from us--sometimes even more. If you would have told me 6 years ago that one day I would be wearing a tutu and pretending to be a ballerina or that I would someday be eagerly perusing the nail polish aisle with my daughter, I would have thought you were insane! Here I am, though, enthusiastically planning for our next girl night. Who knew a sweet little girl could hold such amazing power?!