swimming against a sparkly pink tide: princess culture and our daughters

I ordered a few books this week, and among them will be Peggy Orenstein's new book "Cinderella Ate My Daughter". She has been in the media lately promoting it, and explains the issues surrounding the new "princess culture" very well. I'm excited to read it, as I've thought about this topic a lot. I'm especially interested in how this stuff impacts girls' mental health. There has actually been research about that, and Orenstein cites some of it.

Little girls love to dress up and pretend. I should know, because Celia spends most of her time dressing up and pretending! Somehow she does it without one Disney Princess article of clothing to her name, and somehow I have a feeling her play is much more robust, healthy, and creative that way. The typical act of playing princess is not imaginative in the least. What, exactly, do princesses do besides look pretty? I have seen a lot of little girls play princess, and I haven't seen much creativity involved. Many girls have looked at me questioningly when they've gotten dressed in their princess outfits and I've asked "What do we do now?" There isn't much left to do, once they've donned the cheap dresses and accessories made in far away factories where Disney provided horrible wages and working conditions to poor third world country workers (have you ever researched the dirty side of Disney's business practices, behind all the pink sparkly stuff and fancy theme parks?). Ahem. As I was saying, not much is left to the imagination. In fact, in Disney's "Princess" line, the princesses aren't even tied to the fairy tales they came from. They're just princesses, and their value is in the fact that they're princesses and have found handsome princes to marry. It's shallow. It's highly, highly commercialized. How often do you look for something in a store and have to search for one that isn't covered in Disney princesses? Sure, parents can choose not to buy all that stuff for their kids, and not to emphasize the shallow aspects of princess play, but it's all around us! When Celia goes to school she'll be surrounded by girls who value this stuff and the implicit values that accompany it. I already feel the need to fend off princess themed gifts from other adults.

All this princess stuff has become more than Disney marketing. It's become part of our culture. People take part in it without even realizing what they're doing. Adults fawn over little girls dressed as princesses, telling them how pretty they look in their frilly dresses and tiaras. It's out of our mouths before we've even thought about what we're really saying. What more encouragement do girls need than adults' approval? Those compliments seem natural and harmless enough, but when every other adult a girl encounters gives her gifts of princess paraphernalia and tells her how pretty she looks in her princess dresses and tiaras, what's that girl going to learn? What will that girl learn is important? Those adults' words add up over time. Eventually, little girls start asking "Do I look pretty?" I can't tell you how many of my preschool girls have asked me that. These are three and four-year-olds already thinking more about how they look than anything else. I have seen the results of this "princess culture" first hand, over and over again. This princess stuff isn't harmless, natural little girl play. It's giving little girls extra early exposure to the things we lament over when they're pre-teens and teens. Thanks to Disney's Princess line and our obsession with it, now our 2-year-olds (just babies!) are learning that their value comes from looking pretty like a princess, and how special they are because they're little princesses. How special and unique can a little girl be when she's wearing the same princess dress and focused on her hair or her pink sparkles just like all the other girls? The really good stuff- unique personalities, senses of humor, intelligence, imagination, high aspirations (do you know how many times a girl has told me she wants to be a princess when she grows up?) are masked by this stuff. Our girls' uniqueness is being drowned out in a flood of pink faux fur and ruffles, with a good measure of sparkles. Is it this way for all girls? No. But I'm not exaggerating, either. I've seen it happen over and over. Haven't parents been lamenting that girls are exposed to sexualization earlier and earlier in life? This is the beginning of that, and it can't get much earlier than toddlerhood. In fact, we even received princess-related baby gifts when I was pregnant with Celia. I hid them in a closet and eventually got rid of them all.

I visited the Disney Princess website today, just to see if I was missing something. Maybe there really is a true background story behind each princess. Maybe they have personalities. Maybe there are little stories about them, and adventures they go on. I clicked on each princess to visit her "kingdom". There was an activity to do with each princess and I figured each one would be something different- maybe seeing different sights in the kingdom, seeing an event, or choosing what the princess does during her day. Nope! Every single one consisted of helping the princess get dressed for a party. Girls who play this game pick out a dress, jewelry, and a handbag for the princesses. And that's it. That's the whole purpose of the game. This is how I see girls play dress up now. The purpose of their play is simply to dress up and look pretty, rather than dressing up in order to pretend.

Aren't little girls worth a whole lot more than this? We're not doing it on purpose, but all the little things add up and our girls are not learning their worth. Will they achieve their full potential in life if this is the start we give them? Will they be confident about themselves, or paralyzed by concern about how they look? The question "Do I look pretty?" doesn't sound as healthy or innocent as they get older and the question becomes loaded with self doubt and social pressures. I want my daughter to grow up to be smart, strong, full of personality, athletic, artistic, musical, moral, compassionate. Do I want her to be pretty and popular and have princes for boyfriends? Will she naturally develop an interest in clothes and makeup as a teenager? Probably. But I want that to be just that- an interest, and one of many. Not the center of her self worth.

Celia is a smart girl. At the age of two she already makes inferences about the world based on what she sees and hears from the adults around her. When I tell Celia she's cute or pretty, I'm telling her that SHE is pretty. Not that what she's wearing makes her pretty. But most of the time, I don't mention that anyway. I tell her she's smart. I tell her she's funny. And silly. Snuggly. And that she's a good girl and I love her. I don't call her my special princess (which she has been called by others…) because that's a completely vapid statement. What does "special" actually mean, when it comes to describing a person? It means nothing. Everyone is special to someone. Celia will grow up being praised for the things about her that are actual virtues. And she will also learn what she is not good at and how to improve, compensate, or move on from those things. Rather than measuring her worth based on whether other people like what she's wearing, her worth will be self-determined. She will value herself for the good things about who she is, and for the things she's good at doing. As Orenstein points out in this article (a great one to read, by the way), Cinderella doesn't really do anything! Somehow our society has gotten to a point where just being a princess is something special, with no emphasis placed on whether that actually means anything. Celia will not be a perfect princess, and she'll be a stronger, healthier, happier, more unique girl because of it.