There's no question I'm a mom with opinions and ideas about how I want my daughter to be raised: to be a citizen of the world, with a knowledge of other cultures and the extreme priveledges we experience in this country. From the way we live our daily lives, I know she will end up with values similar to ours, and, I hope, a desire to live her life in a conscious way.
The other thing I feel strongly about is a dislike of the Disney Princess Mecca and Barbie. Both leave my feminist undies in a knot when I think about the messages they send to little girls, how they place such value on your appearance and not on your person. I'm not a fan of commercialized everything from toothpaste to diapers to bedding and have gone to great lengths at times to search out non-branded toys and kiddo crap. I want my daughter to know she is beautiful, not for her appearance alone, but for her sensibility, her intelligence and her abilities.
It was with great joy that I got to read Peggy Orenstein's CINDERELLA ATE MY DAUGHTER this week. She addresses the Disney Princess craze, Barbie, American Girl Dolls and the like. I feel sort of lost as to how to navigate what lies ahead in the dolls/toys realm and know it isn't realistic to keep her so sheltered from what's out there because this fall at pre-school I have a feeling she'll see it all. Orenstein's own candor about struggling through this with her own daughter was reassuring in a 'misery loves company' kind of way.
It was interesting to learn that almost each category began with its own merits but morphed into something akin to anathema when marketers took over. Once upon a time the Disney stories were just stories in books and movies. Barbie was a feminist creation of sorts in a backlash against Roosevelt's calling for girls to play with dolls so they'd want to have children. American Girl dolls were the solution to the oversexed pinup appearance to Barbie (it was then sold by the creator to Mattel, the very maker of Barbie...how's that for ironic?). Now they all come with incredible amounts of swag that is mostly pink, conveying overt messages of consumerism and a message that girls are valued for their appearance. It hard to put one's finger on exactly how these messages hurt our girls, but I think we see it in eating disorders, body perception issues, poor relationship choices and a loss of confidence in themselves.
As Orenstein says of the Disney Princess world, "Let's review: princesses avoid female bonding. Their goals are to be saved by a prince, get married...and be taken care of for the rest of their lives. Their value derives largely from their appearance. They are rabid materialists....And yet...parents cannot resist them." That is so not what I want my daughter to go after in life.
So far we have no Disney in our house. We have no Barbie either, though she's seen it in Maine where her cousin was introduced to Barbie at a young age and gone on to fully invest in it. We have only regular baby dolls, nothing from the American Girl Doll empire. Yet I know all of this lies just around the corner. So when she asks for it, what do I do? I know full well that too much denial of things on my part will only lead to greater demand and the last thing I want is to force her into a place where she wants it all the more because I've said no. However, it doesn't seem as though there's a way to realistically discuss issues of body and materialism with the 3 year old crowd.
How does one navigate the world of girly-girl culture that is oh-so pervasive to raise a girl who has a strong sense of herself, who knows that her beauty is not her ticket to life and holds values that don't include owning as much stuff as possible? Orenstein doesn't claim to have all the answers. Some things she talks about, we do. When television is watched (usually Elmo's world. sometimes SuperWhy and Wiggles) I watch with her. We spend a lot of time doing random art projects of mucking around in the yard (which she calls 'the field'), picking up sticks, playing stuck in the mud, hide and go seek and kicking a ball. Orenstein did some leg work for the rest of us by finding some videos that cast girls in a positive light. Mulan is one Disney movie that has a strong female protagonist. She also talks about a film maker named Hayao Miyazaki who offers female characters of substance. In an ironic twist, these films are distributed by Disney in the US.
Her book doesn't give me a solution to what to do when Ella encounters Princess-Land and comes home asking for things. I think my tactic is to decide how much is enough and hold the line. Some exposure isn't bad. I realize I might get stuck watching some crap films where I want desperately to add my own snide commentary, but I'll try to bite my tongue. I've encouraged family to give toys that aren't in the pink realm. Maybe she'll be interested in Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys. Perhaps some figurines instead of films will allow for her to write her own princess story.
As with most of parenting I think I'll have to wing it when the time comes and rely on what my intuition tells me and find a way to talk about things in age appropriate ways.
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