The feminist hearts in millions of women and men the world over grew a few sizes with hope the past week. That hope came from a three-year-old Newburgh, New York girl named Riley, who ranted about the gender expectations in toy buying for little girls and little boys over Christmas. Her video went viral.

Surrounded by pink baby dolls and Barbie doll dresses, Riley bemoans the sorting of the store, which seemed to imply, as she said, that girls should buy princesses and boys should buy superheroes. Riley argues that some little girls want princesses, but some want superheroes. She said the same goes for boys. Riley herself carries a plush Fred character doll from Scooby Doo.

Riley then goes on to hit the nail on the head--she says that companies try and trick the girls into thinking that they have to buy the pink stuff and that boys have to buy the superheroes. Her dad reassures her that she can boy both the "boy" toys and the "girl" toys, as can the boys.

This video is so affirming for a number of reasons. First, Riley realizes that both girls and boys like "gender-variant" toys like superheroes and princesses; it's not inherent in girls to like pink things and boys to like blue things. Of course, she doesn't know how to think about it that way. She just knows that sometimes her girl friends like to play with toys that are not pink dolls.

Second, Riley has to live with a set a parents with good heads on their shoulders to be allowed to think like this. Many of us had parents--fathers, mothers or both--who firmly told us that little girls needed to buy pink princesses, that the superhero toys were for boys. More often than not, I would expect, boys are not allowed to play with princess dolls because their parents fear it would emasculate them, or some equally ridiculous notion.

OutFront invited Riley for an interview after her rant went viral. She wore a pair of pink tights, and of course, the host had to call her on it, almost like he was trying to prove that all girls really do like pink (and only pink; he seemed to imply). She didn't get it, of course. She's three. She said she liked pink and purple and blue. Blue is a boy's color and pink is a girl's, but that's what she was trying to say: she doesn't have to choose one or the other because she can like both.