The Hundred Years' War

Yesterday morning Marigold had a meltdown in the bathroom.  Which is not itself uncommon, so I will explain shortly the deeper issue here.  She wanted me to do her hair with "two ponytails and three clips," like one of her friends at school.  Her hair is short, so I was having trouble figuring out how to accommodate her request.  As Marigold was falling apart on the floor, my mind was racing with contradictory approaches about how to help her.  Do I go practical and simply tell her that her hair is too short?  (But then how do I address the fact that she wants it to be long, so we are growing it out, even though I love her adorable short cut?)  Do I placate her and try again to get as close as we can to the two ponytails and three clips style?  (Which seemed futile and looked ridiculous, and we were late.)  Or, do I try to explain that she doesn't have to do what her friends do, that her hair is pretty as it is, and that she should just be cool with herself?   I'm not sure if that was the issue for her, but it was and is the issue for me.  I knew having two girls that we would confront this issue, but I didn't realize it would start with such force at this age.  This, I think, is the defining question of raising girls.  How do we teach them, while we struggle with the same issues, to accept themselves?   It reminds me of one of my favorite essays in the New York Times "What's Wrong With Cinderella?"  It's not the princesses, it's the larger question of how to help our daughters grow to be independent and confident women who can hear and listen to their own voices.  And how, as mothers, we can cut through our own struggle with these issues and be with our children at their level.  It is those larger issues that are swirling around in my mind there in the bathroom.   But, at age four, it's much simpler to Marigold, even if it is a doorway to something more complex.  In the end, I chose option B: placate and figure out a way to make the clips and ponytails work.  When I picked her up from school in the afternoon, all of the rubber bands and clips had been taken out.  Her hair was sweaty from playing outside, and she was happy.