A few years ago, writer Peggy Orenstein sent her daughter Daisy to kindergarten.
Within a week, she found a profound change.
Orenstein told NPR's Linda wertheady, "she had remembered all the names and dress colors of the Disney Princess when she came home, as if by penetration . ".
Suddenly Orenstein began to notice that there were references to Princess everywhere around her daughter.
Princess pancake? !
Orenstein said: "The waitress at our breakfast shop will hand her the pancake and say, 'This is your princess pancake. '.
A pharmacist took out a pink balloon.
When Daisy first made an appointment with the dentist, the last straw came.
The dentist asked, "Would you like to sit on my Princess chair? So I can make your teeth shine.
I just thought, 'Oh, my God, do you have princess diamonds too?
"The obsession with everything pink and Princess is the focus of Orenstein's new book Cinderella eating my daughter: Letters from the front line of the new girl --Girl Culture.
The danger of becoming a Prince says that very young children don't understand that your gender is fixed yet --
You can't go to sleep a girl and wake up a boy.
As a result, the little girls may be attracted to the pink shiny princess dress to assert that they are definitely girls.
But Orenstein says too much emphasis on pink may end up being harmful.
"Those little differences that boys and girls are born with, and if children grow up in different cultures and let them thrive, they become huge gaps.
"When your daughter sits in her room in a pink princess gown and a pink spelling suit. . .
Her pink magic.
Ball, it just makes those partitions bigger and harder to cross.
"Why would I want to have a boy here, my dirty little secret: as a journalist, it took me nearly 20 years to write articles about girls, think about girls, talk about how girls should be
However, when I finally got pregnant myself, I was scared at the thought of having a daughter.
When my friend, especially those who already have a son, announced in the delivery room doctor, "This is a boy," I feel like a permanent back seat driver, he freezes when I hand him the steering wheel.
I should be an expert in girl behavior.
From the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, from the Today show to Fox, I talk about it all over the place.
I 've been on NPR many times.
That's the problem: what if after all this, I wasn't ready for the challenge myself?
What if I can't afford my ideal daughter?
I think, with a boy, I can get out of the woods.
Seriously, I think it's a good deal to have a son.
A few years before my daughter was born, I read the stories of some English people who found out
Of the Thirty couples, the husband is five or more years older than his wife, and their first child is a boy. Bingo.
My husband Steven is nearly ten years older than me.
Obviously, I was covered.
Then I saw the undisputed evidence on the sound spectrum (
Or they're talking about undisputed evidence.
For me it looks no different from the nose)
I suddenly realized that I wanted a girl.
Desperate, passionateall along.
I just can't admit it.
But I am still worried about how I will raise her, what kind of role model I will be, whether I will accept my own smug written advice about the beauty of the girl, the complexity of the body image, education, achievements.
Do I want to hug the flower skirt or ban the Barbie doll?
Football or football?
I shop for her underwear and complain about the baby's relentless color coding.
Who cares if the crib sheets are pink or glen plaid?
In those months, I must have used "my daughter will never . . . . . . " I started millions of words and then I became a mother.
Of course, Daisy is the most beautiful baby ever.
Ask my husband if you don't believe me).
I promise to raise her without restrictions: I hope she doesn't believe that some behavior, toys or occupations are not for her gender, and don't believe that they are mandatory for her gender.
I want her to be free to pick a part of her identity.
This should be the privilege of her generation.
I seem to have succeeded for a while.
On her first day in kindergarten, when she was two years old, she was wearing her favorite clothes --
Her "engineer "(a pair of pin-
Striped overalls)—
Proudly give her Thomas the Tank Engine lunch box.
I complain to anyone who is willing to listen to the short-sighted learning curve company, which shows only boys on Thomas packaging and makes the shiny purple-red girl engine "lady", smaller than others(
Other women in Sodor's vehicles are passenger cars
Passenger car-
The name is Anne, clapell, Henrietta, yes, Daisy. The nerve! )
Seriously, though, my complaint is a kind of bragging.
My daughter has gone beyond typing.
Oh, what a powerful autumn.
All he needed was a boy who roared past her on the playground and shouted, "girls don't like trains!
Thomas was pushed to the bottom of the toy box.
Less than a month, she lost her temper when I tried to break Daisy into pants.
As if she had learned the name and dress color of each Disney Princess --
I don't even know what Disney princess is.
She stared eagerly at the tulle.
The curtains at the local toy store and her three-year-old birthday request are "real princess dresses" with plastic heels ".
At the same time, one of her classmates, a classmate with two mothers, came to school every day in a Cinderella dress.
With the bridal veil
What happened here?
My moms, women who once vowed never to rely on men, smiled with tolerance to those daughters who sent out "this is love" or insisted on being called Snow White.
Supermarket cashiers always use "hi princess.
"The waitress at our local breakfast shop, a hipster with a skull tattooed on his tongue and neck, called Daisy's" funny-
Her "Princess meal ";
A lady at Longs Drugs gave us a free balloon and said, "I bet I know your favorite color!
And handed Daisy a pink one instead of letting her choose for herself.
Shortly after Daisy's third birthday, our high school
Pediatric dentist-price
The man who practiced being cheated by comic books, DVDs and arcade games --
Pointing to the test chair, he asked, "Would you like to sit on my special Princess throne? So I can make your teeth shine.
"Oh, for God's sake," I snapped.
"Do you have princess diamonds, too?
"She looked at me as if I were the evil stepmother.
But to be honest, since when has every little girl become a princess?
This is not the case when I was a child, and when feminism is still just a flash in our mother's eyes, I was born.
We don't wear pink from head to toe.
We don't have our own mini heels.
More importantly, I live in Berkeley, California: if the princess permeates our little vintage
Hippie Hamlet, imagine what's going on in the place where women shave their legs?
When my little girl makes a straight line for this dress every day --
In the corner of her kindergarten classroom, I was bothered to play The Little Mermaid role, which actually gave up her voice to get a man and was teaching her.
On the other hand, I think, perhaps I should see Princess mania as a sign of progress, suggesting that girls can celebrate their preference for pink without compromising strength or ambition;
In the end, they can "have everything": be a feminist and a feminist, beautiful and powerful;
Recognized by independent and male.
Then maybe I should just relax and not read too much
Sometimes a princess is just a princess to Freud.
Finally, I published an article, "What's the problem with Cinderella?
Christmas Eve news in the New York Times Magazine.
I'm not ready to go back.
Immediately shoot the "E-most" of the website-
The "mailing" list, along with an article on the latest conflict in the Middle East, lingered there for a few days.
Hundreds of readersor e-
Mail me directly.
Express relief, gratitude, and blatant contempt almost as often: "I have been waiting for stories like you.
"I pity Peggy Orenstein's daughter.
As a mother of three childrenyear-
Old twin boy, I want to know what Princess land has done to my son.
"I don't want a mother like Orenstein.
"To be honest, I don't know how I survived all this hype --
As a girl, I am surrounded by images of women everywhere.
"Genes are so powerful.
"Obviously, I dug something bigger than a few cents --store tiaras.
After all, the princess is just a stage.
This is not to say that when girls go to college, they still hang around in their sleeping beauty dresses (
At least not most).
But it also marks my daughter's first foray into mainstream culture, the first time she has been influenced outside of her family.
What is the first thing culture tells her to be a girl?
It's not that she's capable, strong, creative, smart, it's that every little girl wants --
Or should want
Be the most beautiful of all of them.
What is confusing is: the image richness of the girl's success-
They flooded the playground, performed well in school, and surpassed boys in college.
At the same time, the effort to put their appearance at the center of their identity does not seem to diminish at all.
If so, it has strengthened and expanded its youth (
As the unnatural eyebrows of middle-aged women prove, extend to a long time later).
I 've read a lot about adolescent girls, but from toddlers to "tween", where can I understand the new culture of little girls to help interpret the potential impact --if any —
They absorb images and ideas about who they should be, what they should buy, what makes them girls?
Does playing Cinderella save them from early sex or make them sexy?
Is it fun to walk around town wearing Jasmine harmless, or does it instill an unhealthy appearance in people?
From Prince Charming to Edward Cullen of Twilight, is there a direct route to distort expectations of intimacy?
As a parent, it's tempting to give the new pinkand-pretty a pass.
There are already a lot of things to watch out for, and the limits of our tolerance and energy slip away a little as each of our children grows.
So if your six-year-old partyyear-old happy (
Let her not bother you)
Really, what's the big deal?
Girls are girls after all, right?
I agree they will.
That's why we need to focus more rather than less on what's going on in their world.
According to the American Psychological Association, girls
The emphasis of girl culture on beauty and play
Sexiness increases the vulnerability of girls to traps that are most concerned about their parents: depression, eating disorders, distorted body image, dangerous sex.
In the eighth study
For example, girls in Grade One
Objective
Judge your body based on what you think of others.
Half of the difference in girls' depression reports is more than double
The third of their differences. esteem.
The other will be linked to the appearance of girls of that age with their extreme shame and anxiety about their bodies.
Even the brief contact with the typical idealized female image that we see every day shows that both physically and academically, girls have a lower opinion of themselves.
As you grow older, the new sex appeal will not lead to greater sexual rights.
According to Deborah Tolman, a professor at Hunter College who studied girls' desires, "they answered questions about their physical feelings --
Questions about sex or awakening
By describing their ideas.
I have to remind them that it's not a feeling to look good.
"When a girl blows out the candles on a thirteen-year-old birthday cake, none of this will suddenly take effect.
Since she was born-
In fact, before that
Parents are bombarded with countless small decisions, whether they are conscious or unconscious, that affect their daughter's thoughts and understanding of her femininity, sexuality, and self.
How do you instill pride and tenacity in her?
Do you bathe her with a pink heart? strewn onesies?
Disney Princess La-
Lightning McQueen's Ups?
You should let your threeyear-
Wearing her baby-
Kind nail polish to preschool?
What policies do you have for the latest Disney Channel "it" girls?
Old Dora to new Dora?
Does pink football celebrate the teenage years?
Does a small pink toy expand or narrow its definition?
Even if you think the message is sent by a pink spelling game, there is a tile on the top of the box that says "F-A-S-H-I-O-
N "A bit retrograde, what should you do?
Lock your daughter in the tower?
Relying on the tedious "teachable moment", at which time the mother will chatter about how Barbie lives --
She will lean in front of her bowling chest.
Please prompt the eyes to roll)?
Surprisingly, answering these questions has become more complex since the medium term
1990, the ability to celebrate the body when the "girl power" war cries.
Somewhere along this line, this message becomes its own opposite.
The pursuit of body perfection has been re-shaped as a source --
Often the source.
"Empowerment" of young women ".
So girls are now free to "choose" them instead of getting rid of the shackles of tradition.
However, the line between "arrival" and "must" is blurred very quickly.
Even if there are new educational and career opportunities in front of my daughter and her peers, encouraging them to equate identity with the path of image, self
Expression of appearance, expression of women, pleasure and pleasure, sexy sex.
Raising a girl in a new reality is easy and difficult --
Be an easier and harder person.
I don't know if Disney Princess will be the first attack in a hundred-year diet, tug-of-war and painting (
And permanent discontent with the results).
But for me, they have become the fuse of a bigger problem, that is, how to help our daughters solve the contradictions that they inevitably face as girls, this discord in
Well, I didn't seem to do it, not only with the princess, but with the whole culture of the girlhood: what it became, in the decades I was a child, how it changes, what these changes mean, and how to navigate them as parents.
I was the first to admit that I didn't have all the answers. Who could?
But as a mother who happens to be a journalist
Or vice versa)
I think it is important to state the context.
Market, science, history, culture
In this information, we make choices, provide information, and help parents make decisions more wisely.
So I went back to Disneyland, but I also went to the American girls House and the American International Toy Show.
The largest trade show in the industry, where all hot new products are launched).
I put the children and toys of the Pottery Barn "R" Us.
I talked to historians, marketers, psychologists, neuroscientists, parents and children themselves.
I considered the value of the original fairy tale;
Thinking about the significance of children's beauty pageant;
Go online as a "virtual" girl;
Even at Miley Cyrus's concert.
So you know I'm dedicated. .
As a mother, as a woman, I face my own confusion about the issue of raising a girl in me about my own femininity.
Like all of us, what I want to give my daughter looks simple: let her grow up healthy, happy and confident, have a clear understanding of your potential and opportunities to realize it.
However, she lives in a world that tells her whether she is three or Thirty
Third, the most reliable way is to look like Cinderella.
But I'm better than myself.
Let's go back to where all the good stories started.
Long ago.
Cinderella Ate My Daughter: a rush from the bride's front
Peggy Orenstein's Girl Culture.
Copyright 2011 Peggy Orenstein.
Excerpts with permission from Harper Collins Press.