She loves to dress up in the disney costumes but lately has been asking to see photos of the real dutch princesses (my father is dutch). She also after watching the tinkerbell movie told me that she llikes fairies better than princesses b/c princesses don’t DO anything and fairies have powers. (they do get it we just need to be there to reinforce it.)

She loves to dress up in the disney costumes but lately has been asking to see photos of the real dutch princesses (my father is dutch). She also after watching the tinkerbell movie told me that she llikes fairies better than princesses b/c princesses don’t DO anything and fairies have powers. (they do get it we just need to be there to reinforce it.)

My little cousin is also an extremely smart, precocious girl who is headed for every educational opportunity, so I think the chances are good that she, like Rio, will be a self-possessed, beautiful, brilliant young person (maybe they’ll be college roommates or something, wouldn’t that be a HOOT! the Somerville wild child star goddess and the suburban Birmingham princess-who-loves-model-trains!). But I agree with you, it is downright CREEPY how early words about LOOKS get used to stand in for all kinds of positive and negative qualities for girls. I remember being very young and being told not to ‘act ugly,’ and the well-intentioned maxim ‘pretty is as pretty does’… My little cousin uses “pretty” to refer to all women she loves, from our 80 year old grandma to her uber-dykey tae kwon do teacher whom she worships. It is obviously her most easily accessible positive adjective for a female person. Which is disturbing – but I also wonder what all might be loaded into the word ‘pretty’ for Rio. It might mean ‘central,’ the protagonist, or ‘heroic,’ or ‘indestructible,’ or ‘self-determined,’ in control… Of course that doesn’t change how disturbing it is that this is the rubric of moral and praiseworthy attributes girls catch on to.

I also have to admit that when the princess-franchise hit, I was jealous that exact replicas of Tinkerbell’s and Jasmine’s, etc. dresses had not been available when I was a kid – I would have plagued my poor mom for the stuff! Of course I had it better, putting together my own costumes out of castoff bits of spandex and nylon — but imho, little kids of ALL GENDERS have an inalienable right to sequins, tulle, glitter, tutus, wings, magic wands, tiaras, sparkly high heels, facepaint –

And I even think they have the right to kind of problematic but totally formative and useful psychodynamic fantasies where they’re ooh! helpless! tied to the tracks! and a big, strong imaginary co-star rescues them from the baddies. And then they can rescue him/her, or whatever. That was definitely always part of the draw for me; I think it was a way to process being vulnerable and powerless in the adult world at exactly this age. I like your goddess-worship point on this score. So important to remember the occult and multilevel range of things kids are getting out of a story.

Also, your conversation is a MODEL of how to talk about how fucked up this is to someone so young!

My little cousin is also an extremely smart, precocious girl who is headed for every educational opportunity, so I think the chances are good that she, like Rio, will be a self-possessed, beautiful, brilliant young person (maybe they’ll be college roommates or something, wouldn’t that be a HOOT! the Somerville wild child star goddess and the suburban Birmingham princess-who-loves-model-trains!). But I agree with you, it is downright CREEPY how early words about LOOKS get used to stand in for all kinds of positive and negative qualities for girls. I remember being very young and being told not to ‘act ugly,’ and the well-intentioned maxim ‘pretty is as pretty does’… My little cousin uses “pretty” to refer to all women she loves, from our 80 year old grandma to her uber-dykey tae kwon do teacher whom she worships. It is obviously her most easily accessible positive adjective for a female person. Which is disturbing – but I also wonder what all might be loaded into the word ‘pretty’ for Rio. It might mean ‘central,’ the protagonist, or ‘heroic,’ or ‘indestructible,’ or ‘self-determined,’ in control… Of course that doesn’t change how disturbing it is that this is the rubric of moral and praiseworthy attributes girls catch on to.

I also have to admit that when the princess-franchise hit, I was jealous that exact replicas of Tinkerbell’s and Jasmine’s, etc. dresses had not been available when I was a kid – I would have plagued my poor mom for the stuff! Of course I had it better, putting together my own costumes out of castoff bits of spandex and nylon — but imho, little kids of ALL GENDERS have an inalienable right to sequins, tulle, glitter, tutus, wings, magic wands, tiaras, sparkly high heels, facepaint –

And I even think they have the right to kind of problematic but totally formative and useful psychodynamic fantasies where they’re ooh! helpless! tied to the tracks! and a big, strong imaginary co-star rescues them from the baddies. And then they can rescue him/her, or whatever. That was definitely always part of the draw for me; I think it was a way to process being vulnerable and powerless in the adult world at exactly this age. I like your goddess-worship point on this score. So important to remember the occult and multilevel range of things kids are getting out of a story.

Also, your conversation is a MODEL of how to talk about how fucked up this is to someone so young!

I’ve made every effort to add as many OTHER princesses into my daughter’s world as I can: Sheherazade, a supremely brave and clever young woman, and the greatest storyteller in the history of the world; Diana, the wise and mighty amazon princess who became Wonder Woman; Atalanta (cf. Free To Be You And Me), a gifted athlete and astronomer; Princess Smartypants (ISBN 0698115554); and as many others as I can cram in there.

And how’s it working? Well, she LOVES pink, and she LOVES putting on a flouncy princess dress. And she was ecstatic to go to Disney World this winter and have breakfast with “the Disney Princesses.” But sometimes, SOMETIMES, when she dresses up all princess-y, she becomes “Detective Princess Eleanor”, traveling around her kingdom, collecting clues, and using her knowledge of science, math, language, history, and culture to solve mysteries for her royal subjects. Sometimes.

I’ve made every effort to add as many OTHER princesses into my daughter’s world as I can: Sheherazade, a supremely brave and clever young woman, and the greatest storyteller in the history of the world; Diana, the wise and mighty amazon princess who became Wonder Woman; Atalanta (cf. Free To Be You And Me), a gifted athlete and astronomer; Princess Smartypants (ISBN 0698115554); and as many others as I can cram in there.

And how’s it working? Well, she LOVES pink, and she LOVES putting on a flouncy princess dress. And she was ecstatic to go to Disney World this winter and have breakfast with “the Disney Princesses.” But sometimes, SOMETIMES, when she dresses up all princess-y, she becomes “Detective Princess Eleanor”, traveling around her kingdom, collecting clues, and using her knowledge of science, math, language, history, and culture to solve mysteries for her royal subjects. Sometimes.

My own view of a ‘princess’ that I wished to emulate came from the Francess Hodgeson Burnett (sp?) book, _A Little Princess_. I have yet to see a movie version that quite GETS it. In it, she begins as a princess-in-wealth; she has everything she could want, and is loved and spoiled. Then everything is taken from her — her clothes, her money, even her father — and yet she continues to remain open and giving and selfless. Down to her last penny she is selfless, and wants only good for other people. Then, of course, Job-like, she is rewarded in the end. She doesn’t get back what she had before (the movies always want her to find her father alive; in the book he is dead and stays dead), but gets something else, and learns to be even more generous than ever.

Lucky for me, my kids are not so into Disney princess stuff, but the few times we’ve examined them I’ve tried to emphasize that they are cartoons, and nobody in the real world every looks like cartoons. More, though, I try to talk about the virtues, the things that make the characters interesting. The one real value Disney adds to their fairy tales, I think, is in filling out, somewhat, the characters of their heroines. In the stories they are often young women to whom horror and happiness just happen, with nothing to fall back on but their innocence. In the movies, they have personalities — they are kind, they are patient, they are giving, etc.