Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein.

There were so many things that I swore I would never do as a parent.  Of course, these declarations were all made in a semi-naive, pre-parenthood state of mind.  I can't even recall most of them now because, as it turns out, sometimes parenting comes down to doing what works and sometimes that means doing those exact things you never said you'd do.  


One thing that I do recall sharply is how I was adamant that my daughter was not going to wear pink 24/7 and live in a pretty pink princess land.  I didn't want my daughter to feel that pink things were for girls and blue things were for boys.  My mom used to receive a catalog from a company called Lillian Vernon.  I used to love thumbing through the catalog as a young girl but I remember, even at six or seven, feeling a little perturbed and a little pissed that all the girl things were pink and ballerina-based and all the boy things were red, yellow, and blue and were baseball-based.  I grew up loving softball but the catalog clearly seemed to be telling me otherwise.  


Initially we stuck by my anti-pink battle cry and opted to buy our daughter tiny clothes in a rainbow of colors.  We kept her room decor pretty gender-neutral.  But that was three years ago and an inventory of her current possessions/wardrobe sounds a little like Shelby's description of the church in Steel Magnolias ("my colors are blush and bashful").  Pink tricycle, pink kickball, pink blocks, pink blankets, pink sweaters, pink, pink, PINK.  Just today she told Greg and me that someday she would be old enough to drive a car.  I asked her what kind of car she wanted and she said "a pink truck".  


Enter Peggy Orenstein's book Cinderella Ate My Daughter.  I'm not going to lie...this book caught my eye because it is sparkly and I love a good sparkle.  Also, the title?  What?  I had to know more.  In Cinderella, Orenstein is a mom on an investigative mission to get to the bottom of this new pink/pretty/princess movement that seems to be taking over the world.  She goes every where and talks to everyone, from a marketing bigwig at Disney to a child development expert at ASU, to discuss what effects the princess culture has on our daughters.  She also explores the world of tiny beauty pageants and what taking our social lives online means for young girls today.  


Cinderella Ate My Daughter had me feeling a bit stuck between thinking we should just let our girls play with what they choose to play with and being abhorred by the very specific, very targeting "pink and pretty" marketing ploys (the banners hanging in the Fisher-Price exhibit at the toy trade show?  Seriously?).  One of my favorite parts of the book was when Orenstein visited the child development center at ASU.  The research being done there indicates that "years of same-sex play leave kids less able to relate to the other sex".  The researchers keenly noted that boys and girls playing alongside one another does not mean they are playing together.  They are designing early childhood programs to encourage more cross-sex play which, they proclaim, will lead to easier transitions to dating down the road as well as longer-lasting relationships.  I found this rather fascinating and spent some time pondering how to encourage my daughter in cross-sex play when it is so inevitable for girls to play with girls and vice versa.


Orenstein's book definitely gave me many things to think about it.  But, in many ways, I feel that the book was over thought.  Certain parts of the book had me sharing in Orenstein's outrage and others had me laughing but I think much of Orenstein's concern went too far for me to relate.  Also, I really wished I had liked Orenstein more.  The concept of the book was good but I did not connect with her and that kept me from really enjoying the book.  Certainly she raised many interesting and valid concerns but I ended up feeling mostly that these were issues to be mindful of but not necessarily to wage war against.  As with everything else in life, I think it all comes down to balance.  We want our daughters to be smart and clever and adventurous but I don't see that there is anything wrong with them feeling pretty at the same time.