When you were a little girl, you dreamed of going to the prom, getting married and living the perfect suburban life making apple pies.

And then you grew up, got jaded and imagined moving to Soho and living the perfect “Sex and the City” life while making beads from gum wrappers.

Dreams change.

I thought I would be this big-wig journalist in a huge city, pretending to be Miranda or Carrie and dressing fabulously. I would be the toast of all the parties and have a string of men following me around. I’d be powerful and wanted. That’s what girls are taught to want anymore. Success.

But wait. I sit here at work and in class, and I see the big engagement rings. I hear about my friends’ upcoming weddings and the hunt for the perfect dress and the ugliest bridesmaid’s dress. My old roommate and I used to go make our dream engagement rings. Hers was over $5,000. Mine barely made $2,000.

Apparently what I thought was the common “modern” women’s dream wasn’t right.

We see it in the media. We are supposed to want positions where we are in control, and we no longer want to be at home baking cookies. At most, we’re soccer moms, balancing work and a thriving suburban social life. We’re not supposed to be the ’50s stay-at-home moms mocked in “The Stepford Wives.”

We pigeonhole ourselves into wanting to be someone that challenges the system, when all along we were working just as hard baking cookies and taking Dick and Jane to soccer practice while making the perfect roast for dinner.

But there are still women who want that, or at least something close to it. The media and the women’s movement have erred in teaching us that there is something wrong with wanting to be a homemaker, with wanting to be swept off our feet by a successful man who gives us all we need and want. They say that is giving in to societal pressures. But that’s wrong.

Why can’t we be girls anymore? Why do I have to be a powerful woman? We mock women who fulfill typical women’s roles. We tell them they aren’t living up to their potential, that they are being less than they can be.

When did it become wrong to want your husband to make more money than you? Or to want to cook and clean all day?

I thought the point of the women’s movement was to empower us to do whatever we want. I appreciate all those women who got birth control and more equal salaries. I respect them for working so hard to allow me to get where I am: well-educated, smart, informed and ambitious.

They worked hard, and I’m not demeaning them. But along with other factors, the women’s movement has made being an old-fashioned lady inappropriate. It’s not.

I can dream of my life in Soho, but I know what I want deep down is a suburban dream, with a partner and a society who will allow me to quit work when I have kids if I want to. I’ll perfect my apple pie before then.