Book Review: Cinderella Ate My Daughter

How many us mothers in the post-feminist era have looked on in bewilderment as our young daughters inexplicably gravitated toward pink everything, Barbies, and princesses -- and our sons heard a similar siren call from cars, trucks, and anything that could remotely be turned into a pretend laser blaster with which to shoot bad guys -- all despite our best attempts to promote gender-neutrality as much as possible?

New York Times Magazine contributing writer Peggy Orenstein explores the genesis of this "pinking" of girls in her well-written and thoughtful book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. She explores the issue of whether or not the princesses and tiaras that permeate everything from TV, movies, toy store aisles and birthday parties is just a harmless phase or something more insidious.

She also examines the conflicting messages of princesses who are first and foremost distinguished by their beauty (and, if I might add, also cast as virtuous because they clean well -- Cinderella and Snow White, I’m looking at you) and, at the same time, the real-life remarkable strides girls and women have made "flooding the playing field, excelling in school outnumbering boys in college." If we as parents find it all confusing, imagine what it must be like for a 5-year-old girl.

Here, in a nutshell, is why Cinderella Ate My Daughter is worth your time: Orenstein writes, "It is tempting, as a parent, to give the new pink-and-pretty a pass. There is already so much to be vigilant about, and the limits of our tolerance, along with our energy, slip a little with each child we have. So if a spa birthday party would make your six-year-old happy (and get her to leave you alone), really, what is the big deal? After all, girls will be girls, right? I agree, they will -- and that’s exactly why we need to pay more, rather than less, attention to what is happening in their world." Orenstein goes on to cite some sobering statistics: "According to the American Psychological Association, the girlie-girl culture’s emphasis on beauty and play-sexiness can increase girls’ vulnerability to the pitfalls that most concern parents: depression, eating disorders, distored body images, risky sexual behavior."

I love the fact that Orenstein admits that she doesn’t have all the answers (a refreshing admission, considering so many parenting tomes claim exactly the opposite). I like her attempt at striking a balance, and her admirable endeavors to keep marketers at bay (she said no to nail polish and makeup when her daughter was 3, explaining that it was for "grownups,"; she sees her role as protecting her daughter’s childhood "from becoming a marketer's land grab" and filtering the "amalgam of images, products, and pitches that, just as surely, threaten to limit and undermine her"). Go, mom.