^{Originally published on BabyCenter.com September 7, 2016}

“Don’t let your daughter be a girly girl.”

This is something that multiple people have told me. I’ve been warned not to let my daughter dress in pink, not to show her Disney Princess movies, and to generally shelter her from the things that modern society associates with femininity. And while I can see good intentions behind that thinking, I disagree with it.

I recently wrote a novel called Conquest of Greystone Valley, which is targeted toward young adult girls. It’s a sequel to my previous novel, Greystone Valley, which I wrote before I started giving any thought toward gender politics in fiction. This time around, I started thinking about the girly girl conundrum, so to speak.

I hadn’t written Greystone Valley with gender in mind, but I was happy in retrospect that it had several strong role-models for girls. As an author, that’s a good thing – I’ve written stories that don’t pass basics like the Bechdel Test, and it’s kind of a lousy feeling to have that be your blind spot.

However, one thing I did notice about my story is that the protagonist, Sarah, was very much a tomboy. And actually, the most common way that writers make a “strong” female character is to make her more masculine. A good example in Disney films would be Merida and Mulan.

Having tomboy characters is fine. Encouraging girls to enjoy getting dirty and shooting bows and having fun in traditionally non-feminine ways is a good thing. But in a very wide range of fiction out there, it sometimes seems that the only “strong” women are those who skew heavily toward being tomboys.

This isn’t something new to our society. The issue has been observed as far back as the 1940s, when William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman for this reason:

Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power…Women’s strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.

The situation is a bit more complex than that, and it’s problematic to ascribe violent tendencies as masculine and peaceful, nurturing tendencies as feminine, but it remains true that we have a fairly narrow view of what makes a strong character. Fighting is usually shown as strong, while dancing isn’t, for example.

My solution in Conquest of Greystone Valley was to introduce a “girly girl” character and give her some moments to shine in her own unique way. This isn’t intended to say that girls have to think about dresses and dancing, but to show that there are many ways for a person to be awesome.

Gender-focused marketing toward kids remains a huge bugaboo, and I don’t think I’ll ever completely embrace the Disney Princess or Lego Friends lines, but if that’s what my kids like, that’s what they like. Nobody told me to keep my son from being too masculine, so why do the preferences of my daughter matter so much?

My daughter likes pink frilly dresses and pretty flowers. She also like car races and sword fights. While certain parts of society might push in one direction or another, isn’t it our job as parents to let our kids feel good about being themselves, no matter what they choose?

_{Featured Image: Kevin Casper}