Cinderella Ate My Daughter

03/10/2011

We walk up the beach under the stars. And when we are tired of walking, we lie flat on the sand under a bowl of stars.... They pour into us until we are filled with stars, up to the brim.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

This provocative statement is the title of a new book by Peggy Orenstein (New York: Harper, 2011) in which she states her concern about the "intriguing, troubling contradictions of our growing girly-girl culture" in which, for example, "nearly half of six- to nine-year-old girls wear lipstick or gloss." Here are a few observations by Orenstein...

"I think it's a funny time, because on one hand there's all this good news about girls in education, girls in sports, they're doing great in college and all that, but at the same time the pressure hasn't abated at all on them. And I would (and do) argue that the pressure has grown much more intense to define themselves and gain all their self-worth from the way that they look, and the way that they look is supposed to be, increasingly and increasingly younger, sexy. And femininity becomes defined for them by sexiness (you know, at the age of four), narcissism, and consumerism — all three of which are problematic for me...

"My biggest surprise as a parent, or one of them, was how much of my job is about protecting my child's childhood. And when I think about what that means, in addition to her not wearing makeup when she's three years old, it's about imagination and making sure that her imagination isn't colonized by these prescribed scripts. I'm personally concerned with the script for girls. And for boys, too, but that's not what I write about. I don't mind that Daisy plays a little bit of princess now and again, or did when she was littler; that's fine. But if she's walking around doing the Cinderella story, and not even the Cinderella story, but the version which is all about getting the most stuff, then that's a problem."

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