{"id":2242,"date":"2011-03-07T16:56:01","date_gmt":"2011-03-07T21:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=2242"},"modified":"2011-03-07T16:56:01","modified_gmt":"2011-03-07T21:56:01","slug":"off-the-shelf-rescuing-your-daughter-from-the-princess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2011\/03\/07\/off-the-shelf-rescuing-your-daughter-from-the-princess\/","title":{"rendered":"OFF THE SHELF: Rescuing Your Daughter From the Princess"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Girl w\/Pen friends — it’s been too long!\u00a0 In keeping with today’s theme so wonderfully explored by Debbie Siegel<\/a>, here’s my review of my shero Peggy Orenstein’s latest.\u00a0 This review originally appeared on the Ms. Magazine blog<\/a> and is re-posted with permission.\u00a0 For more of Orenstein’s thoughts read my interview with her on SheWrites.<\/a><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve been within 50 feet of a 4-year-old girl in the past decade, you can\u2019t have escaped the fact that princess is a booming industry. From T-shirts emblazoned with \u201cprincess\u201d to the fad for \u201cmakeover\u201d parties to \u201cprincess potty seats\u201d,<\/a> there is no shortage of products with a tiara theme offered to girls. <\/strong>In her excellent new book Cinderella Ate My Daughter<\/em><\/a>, Peggy Orenstein<\/a> writes as a journalist, a mother of an elementary school-age girl and a former girl herself to investigate the explosion of pink \u201cgirlie-girl culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Common wisdom would have it that the demand for pink is simply hardwired into girls. Orenstein evaluates this by consulting with neuroscientist and Pink Brain, Blue Brain<\/em><\/a> author Lise Eliot, a proponent of neuroplasticity\u2013the idea that \u201c[inborn traits], gender-based or otherwise, are shaped by our experience.\u201d Eliot\u2019s research shows that, in fact, when kids are tiny, \u201c[they] do not know from pink and blue.\u201d She argues that children don\u2019t begin to label behavior or toys as meant for girls or for boys until between ages 2 and 3, as kids come to understand there are<\/em> gender differences. It\u2019s also the exact time when they\u2019re handed toys that are gender-specific. In other words, Orenstein writes, \u201cnurture becomes <\/em>nature.\u201d Boys are blued; girls are pinked.<\/p>\n

So if not nature, what\u2019s the force behind all the pinking? The easy answer is money. As one example, the ever-more-present Disney Princesses line<\/a> grossed $4 billion dollars<\/a> in 2009. The \u201cfather\u201d of that line, Andy Mooney, tells Orenstein, \u201cI wish I could sit here and take credit for having some grand scheme to develop this, but all we did was envision a little girl\u2019s room and think about how she could live out the princess fantasy.\u201d A sales rep at the annual Toy Fair<\/a> has a more direct answer when Orenstein asks if all this pink is necessary: \u201cOnly if you want to make money.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even if cash-hungry marketers are pushing pink to rake in profits, there\u2019s another piece to the puzzle: parents who buy the toys for their kids. Orenstein has a deep empathy for the competing pressures they face. She herself doesn\u2019t want to restrict her daughter from choosing her own mode of self-expression\u2013even if that\u2019s a poufy princess dress\u2013but worries that all the marketing itself constricts her daughter\u2019s choices. Instead of the entire rainbow, girls only get to see the pink slice.<\/p>\n

Orenstein\u2019s sympathy extends to parents participating in the most extreme \u201cgirl-ification\u201d\u2013the pageant parents portrayed on the TV show Toddlers and Tiaras<\/em><\/a>. Visiting a pageant held deep in the hill country of Texas, Orenstein leaves the tiara-fest more ambivalent. She\u2019s not ready to dismiss the parents\u2019 oft-repeated credo that pageants boost their girls\u2019 self-esteem and that it\u2019s okay to tell your daughter that she\u2019s special. She also sees how much much participating in pageants can mean to a family. But it\u2019s clear from her observations that Toddlers and Tiaras<\/em> is doing its share of harm.<\/p>\n

Orenstein mentions how expos\u00e9s of the show have featured \u201cpsychologists who (with good reason) link self-objectification and sexualization to [a] host of ills previously mentioned\u2014eating disorders, depression, low self-esteem, impaired academic performance,\u201d often rebutted by the pageant moms, who then defend their actions. And within the book\u2019s first pages Orenstein references the well-respected American Psychological Association\u2019s Report of The Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls <\/a>which offered hard evidence that an overemphasis on beauty and sexiness made girls vulnerable to problematic behaviors linked to self-objectification.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

So how can parents balance these pressures in order to stem the tide of pink? Orenstein leaves the question open, which might frustrate some readers. She muses as she researches, reflects as she consults, and ends the book optimistic but uncertain about how root-level change can be achieved. On her website she\u2019s just launched a \u201cresources\u201d section<\/a> which offers suggestions of books for kids and parents, recommended shows and films, even a clothing line. Lisa Belkin of \u201cMotherlode\u201d in The New York Times<\/em> has also responded with a solid list of suggested reading in her column \u201cThe Princess Wears Plaid.\u201d<\/a> Additionally, the Ms. blog offers a list of contemporary retellings of fairy tales<\/a> and myths from a feminist perspective. All ask readers to chime in with further contributions.<\/p>\n

Orenstein has a final, crucial piece of advice: Just say NO to the overpinking. That might seem pat to a frustrated parent\u2013saying no reaches beyond appeasing a demanding child to refusing cultural edicts that seem to whisper and shout from every side. Awareness is your best line of defense, Orenstein insisted in dialogue with Lori Gottlieb at a recent L.A. talk,<\/a> as she repeated, \u201cYou just say NO.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Girl w\/Pen friends — it’s been too long!\u00a0 In keeping with today’s theme so wonderfully explored by Debbie Siegel, here’s my review of my shero Peggy Orenstein’s latest.\u00a0 This review originally appeared on the Ms. Magazine blog and is re-posted with permission.\u00a0 For more of Orenstein’s thoughts read my interview with her on SheWrites. If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21109],"tags":[400,21395,4374,5007],"class_list":["post-2242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-off-the-shelf","tag-book-reviews","tag-girls","tag-parenting","tag-pop-culture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}