Acclamation

Personally, I feel like aversion to diversity stems from a fear of the unknown. I remember very distinctly going to babysit at the Sharma's house for the first time, and how Sophia, the little girl I take care of, was SO EASY to bond with. And I was thinking "WOW, I am awesome! Usually it takes my at least half an hour to get these kids to trust me, but this took all of 5 seconds!" Sophia was so cute, too. She was all hyper and darling and she fell asleep with my hair curled in her fingers, looking exactly like one of those fat baby angel paintings of ages past.

http://rlv.zcache.com/sweet_dreams_baby_angel_card-p137119425740088482q53o_400.jpg

Anyhow, I was SO proud of myself for being the most likeable babysitter in the world. However, it was brought to my attention by Mrs. Sharma that Sophia's immediate fondness of me might have stemmed not from a love for my undisputibly winning personality, but instead from the comfort she took in my appearance. I mentioned to Mrs. Sharma that Sophia, instead of sucking her thumb, had twisted my hair to help me fall asleep, and her mother responded that she always did that, and it was a good thing I had long hair because it would have taken FOREVER to get Sophia to sleep without my long tresses readily available to be curled in her little pudgy hands.

Sophia probably would have liked Penelope Cruz because of her hair as well.

http://slideshow.ivillage.com/howtohair_penelope.gif

I took the news in stride. Obviously, I was a little bit disappointed that I wasn't the dog whisperer: child edition, or whatever. But the whole experience sort of brought to light the fact that human beings find comfort and safety in things that they are used to. My long dark hair appealed to Sophia because it reminded her of her temporarily absent mother. Now, the little blonde girl I babysat the day before cried for about 20 minutes after her mother left, and if I'm going with this whole "diversity is out of my comfort zone" theory, I'm thinking that my somewhat exotic (I know, I'm flattering myself, but you get the picture) looks might have freaked her out a bit. It's not that she didn't like me, exactly. It was more that she didn't feel safe with something so unfamiliar.

http://images.tvrage.com/shows/5/4626.jpg

I know that as we get older, we learn to take things more in stride. We don't experience leakage from our orfices when our mothers drop us off at school anymore. Babysitters are a cinch- we know our parents are coming back. The chinese crested from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is just a dog, not an alien sent to rob us of our hair for its own selfish gain. Part of this increased acceptance of diversity, of the unknown, is maturity: we understand that not everything in this world is a threat. But another part is acclamation. We get used to seeing differences.

One happy family from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days... you know you love the dog :)

http://www.filmmonthly.com/images/reviews/HowToLose/HowToLose3.jpg

SO, lets apply this theory to Alice. It really is hard for me to tell what state Alice is at in the books. I think she's past the "chinese crested is an alien" stage. I kind of see her, through both Alice books, moving through increased acceptance, and with this increased acceptance, I see her finding similarities between herself and those who are diverse, or different, from her. When Alice first encounters the mouse, though she feels sympathy for the fact that it has "always hated cats" (Carroll, 27), she seems to not wuite understand how the mouse could not like ALL cats, particularly, her cat Dinah, which is such a "dear, quiet thing" (Carroll, 26). However, she seems willing to move past it, calling the mouse back after it runs off with the promise that she "won't talk of cats, or dogs either if [he] doesn't like them" (Carroll, 27). She slowly accepts and maybe even respects the mouses fears. This struggle seems to continue on in the rest of two books, with Alice encountering again and again creatures diverse from herself and having to learn not only to be comfortable with them but also to respect and accept their strange customs and diverse appearances. And I think we can all attest to the diversity and strange customs that exist in Wonderland!

The mouse: movie edition :)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2487/4192516965_cc7d81b5e0_o.jpg

However, I must ask myself: at the end of the looking glass, how much has Alice really grown? Is she REALLY that much more accepting of diversity? I think that she has grown, but not as much as I'd like her to. Lets say Wonderland is 100% imaginary, and therefore each diverse part of Wonderland is in essence a diverse part of Alice herself, forcing her to see how within diversity can be common themes and similarities, in this case the common theme being herself Alice. Well. Alice does "cut a slice.... and [hand] it to the Red Queen" (Carroll, 262), but if her imagination controls the pudding, then she basically reprimands herself when it says talkes about how "[she'd] like it if [it] was to cut a slice out of [her]", calling her a creature (Carroll, 263). The use of the word creature here, in conjunction with the idea that the pudding is actually part of Alice, emphasizes the diversity that exists within herself, a diversity that can be related to the real world though Wonderland is imaginary. I think that this recognition of the common elements behind the diversity of living things is a huge breakthrough for Alice. She highlights the similarities that unite all things again when she sees two plates and excaims that they look "very like birds" (Carroll, 265).

OK. So Alice, by creating Wonderland as a diverse place reflective of herself and representative of the world, learned to deal and recognize the unity of all living things and the similarities that exist between herself and the other diverse beings of the world. But how have I learned to deal with diversity? To be honest, I think I've gone about it much in the same way I described before: I've acclamated, over time. I don't think it's a bad thing to be uncomfortable with diversity when you first see it, as long as you learn to accept it and, beyond that... To say that I "accept diversity" sounds very cold and isn't really accurate, because for me, and probably most people, our feelings towards diversity go past accepting. I think that I... that I welcome it. It makes the world interesting. Yes, Wonderland, with all its diversity, was chaos. But it was a wonderful chaos, wonderful enough that the book has survived years and years and continues to enchant audiences.