Disney's Curse

So, let me say a little bit about the photo on the front of my blog (for Facebook readers, see it here: www.stepinthetrenches.blogspot.com). The thing is, I wanted to have a little piece of clip art showing a nice woman with two cute kids, doing cute things. So I googled a bunch of clip art, and out of sheer exasperation of being overwhelmed, I finally decided to get a little more specific, and kind of on a lark (since I didn't *really* expect anything good) I googled "stepmom clip art". And this was the very first image, of about 32,500, to appear. Sigh. Of course I knew it was fate and I must choose it when I noticed that her dress matched my blog template's color scheme exactly. :)

So since I've been M and L's stepmom I've noticed that just about every Disney movie/book/thought they have, involves a loving, but tragically, dead mother---and a terribly mean and cruel stepmother. I am mature enough to try to shrug it off with a laugh, and honestly I swear to the heavens I LOVED Cinderella et al as a kid, but after 143 viewings of the same old tired tale in so many forms, it wears on me.

Wednesday Martin's book Stepmonster has some very interesting theories on the origins and relevance of such tales, which I'll go into in further detail later on. But suffice it to say, that for now, I find that image ironically cathartic. Because it embodies everything that I am, as a stepmother---according to children's literary tradition, and in many ways, society's expectations--- and yet, it embodies nothing of who I am.

First Post!

Yay, my new blog is just about ready! Now all it needs is some posts. I haven't posted to my old one in such a loooong time. I've been spending so much time lately trying to figure out my role as a stepmom, worrying about being a good stepmom, reading about being a stepmom, dreaming about being a stepmom (as in, literally having dreams), interacting with other stepmoms on the interwebs, blah blah blah I decided I need a place to direct all this angst! Thus, this new blog.

I plan on reviewing stepparenting books (I'm pretty sure I've read them all), lamenting the status of stepmoms in society and most especially in the fairytale/Disney cartel, posting stories of my experience, and presumably, boring most of you to tears. Tough!

For now I'm leaving my blog open to all readers and so I will only be using my stepkids' initials and won't post any pictures, but I may change my mind later.

So by way of introduction, for those readers who don't know me or my situation, my name is Wendy, I am 33 years old, and in January of this year I became stepmom to a little girl, M, who is 6 years old, and a little boy, L, who is 4 (oh, important detail: I don't have any kids of my own, beyond the fur kind, that is). It is an understatement to say the last 5 months have been a whirlwind of the life change that is Sudden Parenthood.