April 29th, 2011

Dear Sofia,

I'm sure someone is going to cringe at this statement, but I will never call you a princess.. or hope that you look up to any of them - fictional or real - or comply with your pretending to be one. And while that might be a lot easier said than accomplished, I'm going to do my best to encourage you away from it all.

Because if I hear you gabbing away for several hours about what the princess was wearing and how she was standing and pouring over every single detail of what is, essentially, just a wedding... it's really going to bother me.

I already anticipate the difficulty in explaining being fashion-conscious versus fashion-obsessed, image aware versus narcissistic, pleased with your appearance versus being proud of it. I'm certainly not going to muddy the waters even further by introducing an infatuation with being a princess.

As mentioned... someone will disagree. They'll say "Oh, it's harmless fun to look at pictures of a princess and enjoy the fanfare of her wedding." But is it harmless? Do children have the wherewithal to absorb all the visuals and have their thinking not be affected? And how is watching a princess's moves any different from tracking the relationships, pregnancies, divorces and style choices of any other celebrity person? Isn't a princess just a celebrity of a different ilk? What makes her so different from the rest of them to garner a free pass to be idolized?

"Idolize" may be too strong a word for some. I don't know... I'm tempted to say that, if we Christians are being really strict, then we shouldn't put any mortal on a pedestal because we know they're all flawed with sin. And, the more time we spend thinking of them, the less time that are minds are on our faith and our God.

The response will be, "You're making a mountain out of a molehill!" Perhaps. But all idle thinking starts somewhere. Not everyone has a spiritual mind like a trap such that they can flit in and out of worldliness without getting ensnared.

Baby, I have enough trouble with my own appearance and confidence issues to spend time enumerating on the lives of celebrities. Call it a personal pitfall - I can't make my mind stop focusing on things that a) don't concern me and b) serve to distract me from the tiny, weak faith I have, so I have to stay away from it. Period.

I'll do my best to shield you from the horrible grocery store magazines and celebrity hoopla. I hope you won't become enthralled with it...

Love,
Mom