At least according to this NYT article, in which Peggy Orenstein expresses confusion and concern about the popularity of Disney princess merchandise and the princess meme generally that is apparently wildly popular with girls in this country. Here are a couple of short exerpts that were especially sad:
…Mulan and Pocahontas, arguably the most resourceful of the bunch, are rarely depicted on Princess merchandise, t.hough for a different reason. Their rustic garb has less bling potential than that of old-school heroines like Sleeping Beauty. (When Mulan does appear, she is typically in the kimonolike hanfu, which makes her miserable in the movie, rather than her liberated warrior’s gear.)”…
…The infatuation with the girlie girl certainly could, at least in part, be a reaction against the so-called second wave of the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s (the first wave was the fight for suffrage), which fought for reproductive rights and economic, social and legal equality. If nothing else, pink and Princess have resuscitated the fantasy of romance that that era of feminism threatened, the privileges that traditional femininity conferred on women despite its costs : doors magically opened, dinner checks picked up, Manolo Blahniks. Frippery. Fun. Why should we give up the perks of our sex until we’re sure of what we’ll get in exchange? Why should we give them up at all? Or maybe it’s deeper than that: the freedoms feminism bestowed came with an undercurrent of fear among women themselves : flowing through”Ally McBeal,”“Bridget Jones’s Diary,”“Sex and the City”: of losing male love, of never marrying, of not having children, of being deprived of something that felt essentially and exclusively female. …
As I read the piece, Orenstein is describing, in rather convoluted fashion, the classic double bind for feminists: Women who embrace “princessism” are vapid and materialistic and rejecting feminsm while embracing their shallow, fragile feminine femaleness. However, women who reject “princessism” are actually rejecting women-identified things and are therefore being sexist themselves, which is hypocritical and self-hating, and also drives women away from feminism. She comes closest to acknowledging and explaining this herself when she writes:
At the grocery store one day, my daughter noticed a little girl sporting a Cinderella backpack.”There’s that princess you don’t like, Mama!”she shouted.
“Um, yeah,”I said, trying not to meet the other mother’s hostile gaze.
“Don’t you like her blue dress, Mama?”
I had to admit, I did.
She thought about this.”Then don’t you like her face?”
“Her face is all right,”I said, noncommittally, though I’m not thrilled to have my Japanese-Jewish child in thrall to those Aryan features. (And what the heck are those blue things covering her ears?)”It’s just, honey, Cinderella doesn’t really do anything.”
Over the next 45 minutes, we ran through that conversation, verbatim, approximately 37 million times, as my daughter pointed out Disney Princess Band-Aids, Disney Princess paper cups, Disney Princess lip balm, Disney Princess pens, Disney Princess crayons and Disney Princess notebooks : all cleverly displayed at the eye level of a 3-year-old trapped in a shopping cart : as well as a bouquet of Disney Princess balloons bobbing over the checkout line. The repetition was excessive, even for a preschooler. What was it about my answers that confounded her? What if, instead of realizing: Aha! Cinderella is a symbol of the patriarchal oppression of all women, another example of corporate mind control and power-to-the-people! my 3-year-old was thinking, Mommy doesn’t want me to be a girl?
According to theories of gender constancy, until they’re about 6 or 7, children don’t realize that the sex they were born with is immutable. They believe that they have a choice: they can grow up to be either a mommy or a daddy. Some psychologists say that until permanency sets in kids embrace whatever stereotypes our culture presents, whether it’s piling on the most spangles or attacking one another with light sabers. What better way to assure that they’ll always remain themselves? … By not buying the Princess Pull-Ups, I may be inadvertently communicating that being female (to the extent that my daughter is able to understand it) is a bad thing.
The essay has a rather trite happy ending, in which Orenstein notes that her daughter still wants to be a “fireman” when she grows up, but it raises some issues that are worth contemplating, though in ways that felt a bit like fingernails on a chalkboard at times. I’m sure that pink princess accountrements can make feminism seem less threatening, but I doubt they can make feminism more powerful. And what to make of “Dark Tink?” Here is some sample Dark Tink merchandise:
Is she supposed to offer a “slutty” princess alternative? Is offering that option in addition to virginal tulle and satin an improvement?
–Ann Bartow
