Mary Drolet, a Chicago-area mother and former Claire's and Montgomery Ward executive, opened Club Libby Lu, now a chain of mall stores based largely in the suburbs in which girls ages 4 to 12 can shop for "Princess Phones" covered in faux fur and attend "Princess-Makeover Birthday Parties." 

Club Libby Lu, I'll admit, does bother me to some extent, but generally because little girls go there to play Lolita in body glitter and spandex tube tops. 

I watch my fellow mothers, women who once swore they'd never be dependent on a man, smile indulgently at daughters who warble "So This Is Love" or insist on being called Snow White. I wonder if they'd concede so readily to sons who begged for combat fatigues and mock AK-47s.

You know, my grandmother forbade my father from playing with guns. It was the same old rhetoric--"it promotes violence, it's corrupting the culture," etc etc--what you hear flung at Halo 3 and the like. My dad? Is now a historian specializing in the history of weaponry. Huh. 

On the other hand, maybe I'm still surfing a washed-out second wave of feminism in a third-wave world. Maybe princesses are in fact a sign of progress, an indication that girls can embrace their predilection for pink without compromising strength or ambition; that, at long last, they can "have it all." Or maybe it is even less complex than that: to mangle Freud, maybe a princess is sometimes just a princess. And, as my daughter wants to know, what's wrong with that?

You know what I hate about this paragraph? She's just saying it to appease people like me and then step on our faces with a turnaround--"but that's not REALLY it, our culture is still awful and patriarchal and hasn't progressed at all from 1946!" I mean....Jesus H. Christ. I'm 17 years old and I've just never really known a world without Grrrrl Power. Ariel was never far from my VHS drive, I was Jasmine for Halloween in '96, my bedroom was painted lavender and you know what? I want to be a politician. I hate hate HATE when feminists like this bitch and moan because they're stuck on the idea that we haven't moved forward at all--it gives us all a bad name, and furthermore, how much freaking energy does it take to be offended like that all the time? What if girls today CAN have it all? I babysit a lot of little girls with princess posters on their walls, girls that are WELL AWARE of the fact that they don't have to become Susie Homemaker, waiting for their man to come home so they can fetch him his slippers and pipe. I mean, doesn't the fact that the foremost candidate for president is a woman mean ANYTHING? The fact that girls are going to college more than boys now? For god's sake, it's all around! My little sister Abby (who is 5) has Jasmine and Esmeralda grinning from her comforter, nightlight and pajamas and still, apparently miraculously, she loves dogs, getting dirty and kicking preschool ass in soccer. The world IS a less patriarchal place!

Mooney picked a mix of old and new heroines to wear the Pantone pink No. 241 corona: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas.

Only one of those princesses wears pink (consistently).

To ensure the sanctity of what Mooney called their individual "mythologies," the princesses never make eye contact when they're grouped: each stares off in a slightly different direction as if unaware of the others' presence.

Just thought I'd note that--it's interesting, if a bit creepy. I kind of wanted the princesses to be friends when I was a kid, honestly.

Likewise, Mulan and Pocahontas, arguably the most resourceful of the bunch, are rarely depicted on Princess merchandise, though for a different reason. Their rustic garb has less bling potential than that of old-school heroines like Sleeping Beauty. 

I don't know, I've been really pleased with the fact that Mulan and Poca are showing up a lot more. The little sis spotted a Mulan section in Target the other day with more than a few toys (ahhh, did my heart good). And beyond that...I mean, Jasmine is marketed pretty consistently and she wears pants. Pocahontas you could make the "rustic" argument for, but I think Mulan is pretty much on the level of the Jasmine and Ariel--her outfits are pretty AND exotic.

(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.)

Eh, I see that stock art of her in the green outfit with the cricket cage fairly often. Plus, a little digging on eBay turned up, yes, a warrior Mulan doll--Secret Hero Mulan!

Every reporter Mooney talks to asks some version of my next question: Aren't the Princesses, who are interested only in clothes, jewelry and cadging the handsome prince, somewhat retrograde role models?

Y helo thar, bad research! You know, kids aren't stupid. Just because Kid A plays with Belle in her sparkly gold ballgown doesn't mean she forgets that Belle is a lit nerd in the movie. They don't forget that Mulan pretty much, uh saved a country. They don't forget that Jasmine rolled her eyes at, ahem, "cadging the handsome prince" and demanded to be treated like more than a decorative sylph. I mean, if she really thinks that the Princesses are just silly little girly-girls that do their nails and daydream about boys then she simply isn't paying attention. I loved Belle because Belle loved to read, like me. This knowledge didn't evaporate when she stepped onto the ballroom floor in that now-iconic scene in the movie--she could be, you know, more than an archetype in my eyes.

And for god's sake, did anymore see that Enchanted Tales video? What's Jasmine's story about, huh? I mean, the girl literally sings about being able to "find a cure," "help the war," wanting being a diplomat, knowing several languages and a general frustration at the system that's forcing her into the role of Pretty Little Princess. Or--spoiler alert, scroll down at your own discretion--





in Enchanted, when Giselle grabs the sword herself and rescues the Divorce Lawyer in Distress? Ding! Liberation! 





Spoilers over!

"Look," he said, "I have friends whose son went through the Power Rangers phase who castigated themselves over what they must've done wrong. Then they talked to other parents whose kids had gone through it. The boy passes through. The girl passes through. I see girls expanding their imagination through visualizing themselves as princesses, and then they pass through that phase and end up becoming lawyers, doctors, mothers or princesses, whatever the case may be."

Hey, gee--exactly what happened to me! I had my princess phase, I still think the line is adorable but I have, in fact, moved on! I know there's more to life than jewelry and boys! I like sports! I played outside! I'm a member of my school's debate team! And I like princess! Astounding! Exclamation points!!!!!

Mooney has a point: There are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls' self-esteem or dampens other aspirations.

Huh. But don't let that stop your tirade, Ms Orenstein--please continue.

What's more, the 23 percent decline in girls' participation in sports and other vigorous activity between middle and high school has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine. And in a survey released last October by Girls Inc., school-age girls overwhelmingly reported a paralyzing pressure to be "perfect": not only to get straight A's and be the student-body president, editor of the newspaper and captain of the swim team but also to be "kind and caring," "please everyone, be very thin and dress right." Give those girls a pumpkin and a glass slipper and they'd be in business. 

I'm a senior in one of the most souped-up high schools in my county, the richest in the nation with, widely considered, the best school system. You want to know why girls feel the need to be perfect and captain a gazillion clubs and save the whales and clean up the ozone layer all while mainting their French tips? Hint: it's not princess. If there's a problem with out culture it's the message of GET INTO COLLEGE GET INTO COLLEGE COLLEGE COLLEGE COLLEGE propagated at the upper echelons of the socioeconomic ladder--I've never seen it be a princess thing among my peers. It's a combination of the school's pressure, your family's expectation, and in many cases, cultural aspects. And yeah, it's on the boys too.

And you know, even beyond that, isn't her argument that princesses enforce the Damsel in Distress ideal? If there's a trend of girls feeling the need to succeed in everything, from grades to clubs to, ahem, sports...doesn't that sort of show that girls believe they can do anything, even traditionally unfeminine activities? Elsewhere in the article, Orenstein says that Cinderella "doesn't do anything." Well, okay--clearly that isn't influencing today's school-age girls, despite her assertions that they're brainwashing young female minds...but she makes both points, and they contradict each other...I'm getting tangled up in her arguments here.

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. 

Oh sweet Jesus, cry me a river. I'm Cuban-Jewish, have dark eyes, olive skin, a big Esmeralda-esque mess of coarse, curly black hair and yet I never felt ZEE WHITE OPPRESSION from my Princess coloring book. I mean, I'm not going to pretend like racism doesn't exist, but loving Ariel was never a threat to my ethnic identity or anything. You want to know something funny? I wanted the blonde Barbie bar none as a kid, but my little sis has an interesting affinty for...well, the opposite. Her favorite princess is Jasmine, fave Disney girl is Esmeralda, fave prince is Aladdin, thinks Corbin Bleu is really cute, thought Queen Latifah was the prettiest girl in Hairspray, wants the African-American version of the Barbie as the Island Princess doll...noticing a trend? We think it's funny and indulge it--race isn't always a matter of HELP HELP I'M BEING OPPRESSED. Sometimes it's just a fluid nonissue. My favorite princesses didn't look anything like me and I turned out okay....same with Abby, though in a different form. X)

(And what the heck are those blue things covering her ears?)

Valid point.

What if, instead of realizing: Aha! Cinderella is a symbol of the patriarchal oppression of all women,

Oh god, yes! Cinderella makes women conform to the Barefoot and Pregnant stereotype! Girls can't possibly love her and still realize they don't have to be A. Secretaries, B. Beauticians or C. Housewives! Perish the thought!

another example of corporate mind control 

It's The Man, man! God, give me a break. To me, it all comes down to parenting. If you throw things you believe promote an unhealthy message to your child without taking them aside for a Sesame Street talk, then hey, blame's on you. I'm not going to act like Snow White goes out and cries I Am Woman, Hear me Roar and I'm not going to pretend that Disney isn't a massive corporation with its fiscal interests foremost in mind. But your kid doesn't HAVE to be a slave to a culture you think is negative if you WORK AGAINST IT. I can shop at Target and Costco and Walmart and still NOT be a capitalist pig or whatever she's assuming because I am, in fact, capable of NOT snatching up every item of a brand just because I like one of their products! God, it's arguments like these I resent because they treat people like childen--it's not your fault you're this way, it's the culture's! No, you know what? I'm an adult who should be held responsible for my own actions. If I'm a consumer whore than it is my OWN fault, not the company that's out to make the buck they should rightfully be able to pursue. GRRRRRAAAARRR.

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.

Um, really? I know she'd argue this is just because of my Disney brainwashing, but I don't think I thought I could grow up to be a man beyond the age of 3.

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,

Dude, sometimes it's not stereotypes--without surgery, Little Jimmy really can't grow up to be a mom. Now, if he wants to get the work done then by god I'm all for it, but naturally, yeah, that's more biological fact than stereotype.

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. 

Perhaps you could parent and make sure the girl is well aware of her right to lightsaber away, while also being able to prance around in ribbons and tulle! It can be done!

What's more, just because they wear the tulle doesn't mean they've drunk the Kool-Aid. Plenty of girls stray from the script, say, by playing basketball in their finery, or casting themselves as the powerful evil stepsister bossing around the sniveling Cinderella.

YES. I haven't finished the article and I really hope she continues on this thread. Because: YES.

"Playing princess is not the issue," argues Lyn Mikel Brown, an author, with Sharon Lamb, of "Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers' Schemes." "The issue is 25,000 Princess products," says Brown, a professor of education and human development at Colby College. "When one thing is so dominant, then it's no longer a choice: it's a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There's the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you'll see their choices are steadily narrowing."

I don't know, I see plenty of unisex toys out there. Anyone see the Mario Party DS commercials? There are plenty of little girls in those ads, button-mashing away. Is there some law saying she can't play with Legos? Where is the rule that makes the realm of Batman and Hardy Boys and chemistry kits a Y-chromosome-only zone? You can make a case for the marketing of these toys, maybe there needs to be more print ads with little girls making Spider-Man and G.I. Joe battle to the death, but it isn't this dire, inescapable, Big Brother Commands You to Play House situation.

 A year ago, when we shopped for "big girl" bedding at Pottery Barn Kids, we found the "girls" side awash in flowers, hearts and hula dancers; not a soccer player or sailboat in sight. Across the no-fly zone, the "boys" territory was all about sports, trains, planes and automobiles.

Where is the rule preventing you from buying from the boys section? My other little sis Maria, who is 10, just painted her walls lime green and has a blue-and-green bedspread (let it be known that she is also a Hannah Montana and High School Musical devotee). Yes, you can argue that flowers-and-puppies are geared pretty aggressively towards girls, but if you honestly hate it that much, why do you HAVE to give into it? (And besides, I see plenty of neutral options out there...but whatever, sake of argument and all that.)

And you know, I know this isn't a popular argument, but the ideas of  girlhood and boyhood are very sweet in their ways. Take The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Daring Book for Girls. They're pretty much the same, but it acknowledges that girls like to make fortune tellers and boys really don't. Is it hideous that the books segregate the sexes in this way? I don't think so. A world where all toys are unisex seems pretty dreary to me...make sure that boys know they can play with dolls and girls can run the bases as much as they want, but do we have to act like there aren't any differences at all between little boys and girls? As long as 7-year-old Mary knows she can go down to the sandlot and play catcher with the boys as much as she can drool over Sleeping Beauty's ballgown, is it really crushing oppresion to think that the Norman Rockwell-esque idea of the little boy playing baseball is cute?

Easier, that is, unless you want to buy your daughter something that isn't pink. 

Goddammit, let her have her pink phase. The girls that don't like it will let you know--loudly, in the case of a girl I babysit--that they hate pink, and the rest will probably outgrow it. It's around fourth grade, I think, that girls want to be treated as Tweens (or whatever they're called now) and assert that their favorite color is blue or red or whatever.

It wasn't until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a key strategy of children's marketing 

Um. Really? Is she saying that play kitchens weren't exclusively advertised to girls in the 50's?

That was also the time that the first of the generation raised during the unisex phase of feminism -- ah, hither Marlo! -- became parents. "The kids who grew up in the 1970s wanted sharp definitions for their own kids," Paoletti told me. "I can understand that, because the unisex thing denied everything -- you couldn't be this, you couldn't be that, you had to be a neutral nothing."

Ding ding ding, there's your answer! Let the girls have their glitter, for Christ's sake, the alternative didn't work out that well!

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.

And the second wave was awesome and totally necessary and I would've been out there marching for my right to not be a secretary if I'd have been around. But there's a limit.

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. 

Or maybe girls have realized they can balance the two now? Don't Hilary Clinton, Condi Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Maggie Thatcher, the woman who just won in Argentina and Segolene Royal mean anything? What about the constant message of "Girl Power!" that permeated the Spice Girls, Destiny's Child, all those bands we worshipped in the nineties? The Cheetah Girls? Title IX? We've made progress, honestly we have! The Blahniked women of Sex and the City were PR experts (Samantha), gallery curators (Charlotte), columnists (Carrie) and Harvard-educated lawyers (Miranda). They balanced! And the show was a massive hit that has spawned a movie!

I mulled that over while flipping through "The Paper Bag Princess," a 1980 picture book hailed as an antidote to Disney. The heroine outwits a dragon who has kidnapped her prince,

CoughcoughEnchantedcoughcough.

but not before the beast's fiery breath frizzles her hair and destroys her dress, forcing her to don a paper bag. The ungrateful prince rejects her, telling her to come back when she is "dressed like a real princess." She dumps him and skips off into the sunset, happily ever after, alone.

But why can't the girl have it all? Why can't she be kickass AND get the guy? Hello, Princess Fiona! Hello, Mulan! Hello Ella-freaking-Enchanted (oh god, Ella was my goddess). You know though, now that I look ahead, Orenstein rejects this idea so cool. I'll drop it.

There has to be a middle ground between compliant and defiant, between petticoats and paper bags.

Lady, maybe we've FOUND that halcyon land of milk, honey and equal wages. Disney Princess and all.

I remembered a video on YouTube, an ad for a Nintendo game called Super Princess Peach. It showed a pack of girls in tiaras, gowns and elbow-length white gloves sliding down a zip line on parasols, navigating an obstacle course of tires in their stilettos, slithering on their bellies under barbed wire, then using their telekinetic powers to make a climbing wall burst into flames. "If you can stand up to really mean people," an announcer intoned, "maybe you have what it takes to be a princess."

EVERYONE SHOULD PLAY SUPER PRINCESS PEACH. I beat it today, it's awesome. And I love that ad.

The princess as superhero is not irrelevant. Some scholars I spoke with say that given its post-9/11 timing, princess mania is a response to a newly dangerous world. 

Princess mania's been around longer than 9/11, yeah. So has "supergirl syndrome." I think it's an issue to be sure--though not an exclusively female one--but I do not, do not find the root in Snow White. At all.

IN THE 1990S, third-wave feminists rebelled against their dour big sisters, "reclaiming" sexual objectification as a woman's right -- provided, of course, that it was on her own terms, that she was the one choosing to strip or wear a shirt that said "Porn Star" or make out with her best friend at a frat-house bash. They embraced words like "bitch" and "slut" as terms of affection and empowerment. That is, when used by the right people, with the right dash of playful irony. But how can you assure that? As Madonna gave way to Britney, whatever self-determination that message contained was watered down and commodified until all that was left was a gaggle of 6-year-old girls in belly-baring T-shirts (which I'm guessing they don't wear as cultural critique). It is no wonder that parents, faced with thongs for 8-year-olds and Bratz dolls' "passion for fashion," fill their daughters' closets with pink sateen; the innocence of Princess feels like a reprieve.

This I agree with--the extremes are pretty icky. I loathe Bratz dolls, they're where I draw the line. Maybe not the ownership of them, but a parent that lets her kid be consumed by the fairytale ideal seems a lot better than the one who gives into the Li'l Stripper.

"But what does that mean?" asks Sharon Lamb, a psychology professor at Saint Michael's College. "There are other ways to express 'innocence' -- girls could play ladybug or caterpillar. What you're really talking about is sexual purity. And there's a trap at the end of that rainbow, because the natural progression from pale, innocent pink is not to other colors. It's to hot, sexy pink -- exactly the kind of sexualization parents are trying to avoid."

Not if you make sure your little girl knows it doesn't have to be this way. Most girls love pink at a certain age, but most girls do not grow up to become party girls, "sluts," what have you.

Walking into one of the newest links in the store's chain, in Natick, Mass., last summer, I had to tip my tiara to the founder, Mary Drolet: Libby Lu's design was flawless. Unlike Disney, Drolet depended on focus groups to choose the logo (a crown-topped heart) and the colors (pink, pink, purple and more pink). The displays were scaled to the size of a 10-year-old, though most of the shoppers I saw were several years younger than that. The decals on the walls and dressing rooms -- "I Love Your Hair," "Hip Chick," "Spoiled" -- were written in "girlfriend language." The young sales clerks at this "special secret club for superfabulous girls" are called "club counselors" and come off like your coolest baby sitter, the one who used to let you brush her hair. The malls themselves are chosen based on a company formula called the G.P.I., or "Girl Power Index," which predicts potential sales revenues. Talk about newspeak: "Girl Power" has gone from a riot grrrrl anthem to "I Am Woman, Watch Me Shop."

This is true--a place like Libby Lu, that enforces nothing BUT the glitter-glitter-squeal image is a tad messed up, to me. That and the kind of parents you see bringing their kid in there--it's not all of them, but it reeks of Jon Benet half the time.

On my way out of the mall, I popped into the " 'tween" mecca Hot Topic, 

Don't know what planet she's living on--Hot Topic is strictly teenage land. Tweens are the set that kiss Zac Efrom pinups, not the ones that ring their eyes in kohl.

To appeal to that older child, Disney executives said, the Fairies will have more "attitude" and "sass" than the Princesses. What, I wondered, did that entail? I'd seen some of the Tinker Bell merchandise that Disney sells at its theme parks: T-shirts reading, "Spoiled to Perfection," "Mood Subject to Change Without Notice" and "Tinker Bell: Prettier Than a Princess." At Hot Topic, that edge was even sharper: magnets, clocks, light-switch plates and panties featured "Dark Tink," described as "the bad girl side of Miss Bell that Walt never saw."

Girl power, indeed.

Plz to be researching. In the Disney Fairies line, Tink is marketed as a "Pots n' Pans Fairy"--that's right, Neverland's own pint-sized mechanic. A number of the characters shun pastels and like to play with animals. Some of them WEAR PANTS! They go on adventures, avert disasters, save chipmunks and then sew themselves a new dress out of rose petals--I know, the 5-year-old loves that stuff. Tink merchandising is definitely skewed towards the Naughty Little Miss angle, but the Disney Fairies line itself is far more innocuous.

A FEW DAYS LATER, I picked my daughter up from preschool. She came tearing over in a full-skirted frock with a gold bodice, a beaded crown perched sideways on her head. "Look, Mommy, I'm Ariel!" she crowed. referring to Disney's Little Mermaid. Then she stopped and furrowed her brow. "Mommy, do you like Ariel?"

Jesus, I just find that sad. That she has to worry about disappointing her mother over something she's so excited about.

I considered her for a moment. Maybe Princess is the first salvo in what will become a lifelong struggle over her body image, a Hundred Years' War of dieting, plucking, painting and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results. Or maybe it isn't.

YES YES LET'S END ON THIS NOTE!

For now, I kneeled down on the floor and gave my daughter a hug.

She smiled happily. "But, Mommy?" she added. "When I grow up, I'm still going to be a fireman."

DING DING DING. See? See, Ms. Orenstein? IT CAN BE DONE!

I'm not sure what to make of this article now. The vast majority of it bemoans how baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad the princesses are, but the conclusion is sort of...divergent? Oh, I don't know. I'm exhausted from writing this thing anyway.


If you actually read all that, holy crap, wow. *golf clap*


Oh, and while looking up things in regards to this article, lookit the cool stuff I found: Awwwww, coooool, and the greatest shirt ever.