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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was reading Little House in the Big Woods to my younger daughter last night (I read the entire series to her older sister many years ago) and I skipped over the paragraph in the store where the storekeeper praises Mary for her blond hair and ignores brown haired Laura.

Generally I think the books are good bedtime reading for kids that like them and if patents are careful to point out and discuss the issues being discussed here. But I’m sure there are better options for school reading.[/quote]

Why would you do that?  You are taking things to a new round of silliness.

As a brunette (non white) child, Laura's brown hair was something that made me proud of my brown hair growing up in a sea of blondes or sun spray blondes.

Pa liked brown hair. The brown haired heroine was fiesty, smart, independent and strong.

Blonde haired Mary was vain, week and a goody two shoes. She didn't turn nice until she was struck blind.[/quote]

I agree too. That passage made me proud of my brown hair. It was one I thought about a lot over my childhood. [/quote]

Yep.

Laura was the first brown haired heroine ever. All the girls wanted to be Laura because she was so strong and smart.

We brunettes might not have had any Barbie dolls, but we had Laura.

She made me proud to be a brunette.[/quote]

I agree that looking at the series as a whole brown haired Laura is the strong smart one and blond Mary is not.  But at that moment in the first book Laura sees and describes the strong cultural preference for blond girls.  My younger daughter has brown hair and is envious of the blond hair of her older sister (I guess like Laura) and at that moment I was reading it I didn't feel like repeating that cultural preference, or discussing it.  I just wanted her to fall asleep thinking about what it must have been like to live in a one room house and go to town and into a store for the first time at six-years-old rather than worrying that the world prefers blonds when she has dark brown hair.  I wish she didn't envy blond hair and I wish she worried less in general but I just didn't want to take any of that on last night.
[/quote]

Oh, well in that context I can understand why you skipped over it, especially if your daughter is young.  When she's older and reads the book herself, maybe she'll relate to the brown-haired Laura and feel proud that she has brown hair too.  I know I did, even though I found it hurtful that blond Mary was preferred.  [/quote]

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