Return of the "Girly Girl"?

"I think girls should be encouraged to look beyond gender roles but not to automatically shun anything considered 'girly.'"

By Alix Black

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Sesame Street, the iconic children’s show, is taking a risk this season. Facing stiff competition from newer kids programs like Dora the Explorer, the show has developed a new female character named Abby Cadabby...a "girly girl" who has stirred up debate in PC circles. Youth Radio's Alix Black takes Sesame Street's new development as an opportunity to describe the balance she has found between her own girly tendencies (Alix wears a tiara on a regular basis) and her feminist beliefs.

I sometimes wear a pink tiara. And not just in the privacy of my home. I’ve worn it roaming the halls of my school or even the streets of Atlanta. People probably wouldn’t notice if I were five. But I’m a few months shy of eighteen and I’m constantly asked about my choice of headgear.

My answer is this: Too many girls these days are pressured into the role of aspiring doctor or lawyer or Wall Street trader. As a result, the ranks of faerie princesses are declining at an alarming rate.

This is why I’m tickled, well, pink about Sesame Street’s newest female muppet. She’s an enthusiastic and unrepentantly feminine little pixie by the name of Abby Cadabby. Abby is a "girly girl" character to contrast the show’s rambunctious tomboy Zoe and bilingual guitar-playing Rosita.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m a big proponent of gender equality. My parents firmly instilled in me the values of feminism. At the wise age of four, I told the McDonald’s cashier that asking if I wanted a "boy toy" or a "girl toy" was sexist.

I then chose the Hot Wheels car.

I think girls should be encouraged to look beyond gender roles but not to automatically shun anything considered "girly." Parents who are overly concerned about their little girls turning into air-headed Barbie wannabes aren’t necessarily helping them. What’s wrong with a pretty in pink girl who dreams of designing sparkly tutus for Chihuahuas...but also might want to be a brain surgeon when she grows up?

Abby, who has just moved to Sesame Street from Fairyland, is enthusiastic without a cheerleader’s "rah-rah" or the diva tendencies of a certain tiny Disney faerie. Yet she is decidedly girly, an adjective which cannot be applied to any of the show’s other characters. Sesame Street, which is going into its 37th season, somehow has no high-profile female lead. Abby Cadabby could change that.

As someone who grew up with Sesame Street (and preferred Bert and Ernie to the saccharine "Barney"), I trust the ever-PC folks over at Sesame Workshop to handle Abby well. They won’t let her turn into a walking stereotype. At the same time, I’m glad to see a puppet who clearly embraces her femininity...instead of neutralizing it with gender-ambiguous personality traits.

Maybe the introduction of Abby Cadabby will encourage a few more little (and not-so-little) girls to become aspiring faerie princesses.