ENGL 1301-83420
Summary/Response Essay
February 12, 2018
In “What’s Wrong With Cinderella?” Peggy Orenstein gives a glimpse of her personal battle between wanting her daughter to know she can be anything she chooses to be and right now, horrifying to her mother; she wants to be a princess. Orenstein is a self-proclaimed feminist, living in a time where “princess” is everywhere and she has had enough, but her daughter can’t get enough pink, and right now pink sells. Is it really so horrible to have a pink-loving, princess-adoring three-year-old daughter? If being a feminist means you have the right to make your own choices then what is wrong with choosing to be a princess; for myself, I say go for it!
Orenstein recounts the moment she lost her temper after one person too many referred to her daughter fondly as a princess and after she exploded her daughter asked her “What’s wrong with princesses?”
The author describes the rise of the princess brought on by a failing consumer products division of Disney and how it is now “the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created.” After Disney tapped into the financial success of the princess; others soon followed. Mattel had a “world of girl” line then Club Libby Lu came out with “Princess-Makeover Birthday Parties.” It was all-princess, all the time and “pink” became “the new gold.”
The feminist mother worried about her daughter and “what playing Little Mermaid is teaching her.” Is it shaping her to be self-critical because being a princess is all about being beautiful and based on appearance or has it progressed into being more? She askes herself if being a modern day princess is more evolved and girls can be strong and ambitious and love pink at the same time. As far as I’m concerned the answer is a resounding yes!
There’s a reason that the princess model is so successful and it’s because the demand was already there. The manufacturers simply provided what the children already wanted. There is variety in the princess selections; not all are just pretty. There are warriors and royalty who fight against the status-quo; that to me shows strength and conviction.
Andy Mooney, the Disney executive who tapped into the power of the princess, explains girls who love dressing up as a princess are no different than boys who go “through the Power Ranger phase.” Dressing up is more about the feeling than the actual clothing. When children play dress-up, they get to be creative and pretend to be anything they choose to be. “Costume play is enjoyable and enhances creativity, fantasy, and self-esteem. It boosts their ego and brings about a sense of well-being” (Schaefer/Cangelosi 90).
While Orenstein rails about why her daughter can’t comprehend that “Cinderella doesn’t really do anything” she is creating the very doubt that she fears which is that being a girl “is a bad thing.” Pretending to be a princess doesn’t put a limit on what a girl chooses to be as an adult. In fact, other studies show young women “who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty – are more likely to be depressed than others.” Has the pressure of being able to be anything created the stress of being everything?
There is strength found in becoming what you choose to be, even in a princess. If you give a girl a tiara and a wand today, she’d more likely think she can rule the world than bow down to a prince. Orenstein recognizes that girls “dominate the honor roll and outnumber boys in college.” Do the statistics create a cause for concern or make a case for the fortitude of women today who once dressed up as Cinderella?
Nevertheless, as the author frets over her daughter's current love of princess she still hopes that she will “find her Prince Charming and have babies.” She hopes that her daughter’s generation will be the one that can balance the “melding of old and new standards.”
In the end, the problem isn’t really the princess, but how Orenstein wants to guide her daughter into “the dissonance that is as endemic as ever to growing up female” and the concern that her daughter's choices are her own and not influenced by the wave of society.
I for one would welcome a world where women embraced each other's choices without judgment, even if they conflict with our own. We are each on a journey and as cliché as it may sound you can’t understand a person’s choices unless you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. So, for every girl, or boy, that wants to be a princess, wear pink, or be a girlie-girl I say go for it!
Works Cited
Orenstein, Peggy. “What’s Wrong With Cinderella?” New York Times Magazine. Dec 24, 2006
Schaefer, Charles E./Cangelosi, Donna. Essential Play Therapy Techniques: Time-tested Approaches. The Guilford Press, 2016
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