Yesterday I saw a little girl dressed in a little fairy princess dress. It was close fitting on top and layers and layers of tulle for the skirt. It was the kind of dress made for flouncing and dreaming those "sugar and spice and everything nice" kinds of dreams. It was a rich, bright fucsia that set off her lovely brown skin and curly black hair. I saw her from a distance, bouncing along, her hair and skirt bouncing with her. How adorable, I thought.
As her bouncing, slightly wobbly gait brought her closer, I could her her yelling tearfully and her face came into focus, tear-stained and twisted with anger, her hair tangled and wild.
"I won't! I won't!" She shouted, sobbing.
I watched her stomping her broad, bare feet in her flight. I watched her fling the plastic fairy wand to the ground, watched it bounce and clatter away before being scooped up by her weary, angry mum. I don't actually know what she was so enraged by, but it was plain that she was DONE with fairy princesses. I loved seeing that defiance.
Then, quite suddenly, I was blinded by unbidden tears. I felt my chest close up as a wave rose within me--a tide of grief, a tide of pain and anger that almost made me stagger. My daughter, me,all the women I love, all the brave and quiet and fabulous women I don't even know... we now live under the regime of a hateful gang of thugs, whose putative leader is--literally--the peddler of this very commodity, of beauty queens and fairy princesses to grab and molest and demean.
I wanted to throw my head back and howl like a wolf. I wanted to rage and stomp just as she was doing, at the sheer injustice, at the loss of what should have been, in an election halfway around the world.
