Brave

We took Littletree to see the new Disney movie Brave last week, and I have to say, I’ve finally encountered a Disney princess I can get behind.

Littletree loved the movie; well, I probably enjoyed it just as much. Most definitely the first time I’ve sat through a Disney Princess movie and not been cringing at all the princessy messages they drill into girls.

Basically, Princess Merida is set up, like every other princess, with a bunch of princes competing for her hand in marriage. And then she gets up, grabs her bow and quiver of arrows, and announces that she will be competing for her own hand. Awesome.

And of course she’s a gorgeous redhead full of strength and determination and entirely un-girly.

But most of all, she reminds me so much of how Littletree looked when she was about three years old, before she got dreadlocks. Especially in the opening scene which shows Merida when she was about that age.

Oh how I miss Littletree’s wild, flowing red curls! And it turns out she misses her curly red hair now too. So funny, after she so determinedly convinced her hair to grow straight – the day Littletree decided that she wasn’t going to have curly red ringlets any more, she said she was going to have “princess hair”. Which is apparently light brown and straight with a little wave in it.

I rolled my eyes and thought, ‘Yeah, right. Kid, your hair is ginger and in corkscrew ringlets, and that’s how it is, you can’t change it’, but Littletree sat in front of the mirror for hours, with a hairbrush and a look of fierce determination on her face, brushing and brushing, all the time chanting “straight hair, brown hair, straight hair…”

And lo! Before my very eyes over the next few months, her hair started growing in straight. But now she wants it curly again!