The Princess and the Frog

(Full Disclosure: I started writing this a couple months ago and thanks to basketball season, a musical, baseball season and numerous other things I will update the blogosphere on later I just never got it finished. But I didn't want to abandon it completely so here it is - better a little behind than never!)

I am a brunette. When I was in high school (maybe even before) I started wanting to dye my hair. My mom never let me. (Just a sidenote: In hindsight I'm really glad she didn't let me especially when I look back at pictures from my Sophomore year of college, when I decided I didn't need my mom's permission to dye my hair, and I see hair that is a very strange shade of orange so thanks for postponing that for as long as you could Mom!)So you're 14 years old, your mom won't let you dye your hair, what do you do? Enter Sun-In. The best way to dye your hair without really dyeing your hair! Unfortunately for 14 year old Kaitlyn, Sun-In doesn't really work on hair that is as dark as mine. It just kinda makes it smell funny. So I remained a brunette for the rest of my high school existence. To some of you this might not seem like a big deal. You would be wrong. Everybody was blonde or bought their blonde out of a bottle or wanted to buy blonde in a bottle. From girls at school, singers, movie stars - I felt like everybody was blonde! Blondes had more fun. If you were blonde, people liked you more. And believe me, not that I remember specifics, but I'm sure these points were brought up to my mom repeatedly. When I finally realized that my mom was not going to change her mind I gave up trying to be a blonde and started trying to just be ok with being a brunette. I looked for brunettes that I could try to look/dress/be like. Enter Belle (from Beauty and the Beast), Audrey Hepburn, Julia Roberts, Amy Grant, and others famous and not famous that were some of my favorite people growing up. It was ridiculous and silly but it was a big deal to me at the time; I wanted to know about women who were beautiful, sucessful, and NOT blonde! And even now, as an "adult" with the ability to dye my hair all I want the only thing I have done (excluding my college experiment) is enhance the color I already have. But it took quite a bit of reprogramming (and other brunettes to look up to) for me to convince myself that blondes didn't actually have more fun, that pretty did not equal lighter hair and that brunette is beautiful!

For Christmas, my wonderful mother-in-law gave me an awesome Princess and the Frog bag. It is beautiful lavender and green bag with a picture of Princess Tiana on the front. AND it is the perfect bag to take a change of clothes to school when I know it's going to be a long day of rehearsals and basketball games and workouts with the girls. A couple of weeks ago I was standing in the gym after one of Josh's basketball games talking to some girls that I have in class. I had all my bags with me including my Princess and the Frog bag. As I was standing there talking I began to feel extra weight on the Princess and the Frog bag that I was holding in my hand. I looked down to see Jayda, the niece of one of Josh's basketball players patting the face of Princess Tiana. She is adorable, probably 3 or 4 years old and African-American. When I looked down at her she kept patting the bag and said "I love her. I love her. I love her." It was precious! Her mom came over and apologized but I told her it was just fine and I let her take the bag and drag it around the gym for awhile until the guys came out of the locker room. She was so fun to watch!

Before I start trying to put all the thoughts in my head into an at least semi-understandable, cohesive jumble I want something to be completely clear - I realize that my issues with hair color don't even begin to scratch the surface in comparison to issues of race. There is NO comparison really. I am not a person of color and I know that because of that there are many things that I will never be able to understand. The story I told at the beginning was a little tidbit about my life and it was fun to share but I don't want to make it seem like because I went through that I understand what it feels like to grow up surrounded by Princesses that you are supposed to connect with (thank you marketing.) that are a different race than you. Do you start to feel like you were not meant to be a Princess? Like you can't? Do you feel like princess = pretty and none of the princesses look like you? This is why I didn't just want to do a normal review of the movie. Yes, it's classic Disney, the songs are fun, the story is incredible and I loved it! But it's so much more than that. I was reading reviews of the preview nights and the stories were incredible. So many girls showed up already wearing a Princess Tiana dress and holding a doll that looked like them. A doll that people will tell her is beautiful, a representation of a princess who people will say looks just like her! More than I loved the movie and the songs and the characters I love that Jayda has a hero, a princess to call her own that looks like her. It is and will always be a historic movie. Historic in ways that I will never be able to fully understand. But I am glad that I was a very small part of it and The Princess and the Frog, like most other Disney movies, will always have a very special place in my heart!