Orenstein knew there was something about this she didn't like. The supermarket checkout woman addressed her daughter with "Hi, Princess." She found her daughter lying on the floor at a bat mitzvah, surrounded by a group of boys, waiting for her "prince" to come and wake her. Suddenly, as if on princess steroids, Orenstein began noticing princess mania at every turn: Daisy's classmates-even one with two mothers-showed up to school in princess outfits. (Gender-neutrality success!) But it would be less than a month before the now-7-year-old would scream as her mother tried to wrestle her into pants, begging for a "real princess dress" with matching plastic high heels. Daisy marched into her first day of preschool in Berkeley, Calif., in her favorite pinstriped overalls and carrying a Thomas the Tank Engine lunchbox. Orenstein's own daughter didn't start out princess-obsessed. In The Little Mermaid, Ariel literally trades in her voice for the chance a man she's never met will love her in return. Just think about the fairy tales themselves: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White-all pitted against evil, ugly old women (read: age = awfulness), waiting for the prince they've never met to fall for their beauty (not smarts) and rescue them from misery.
This princess mania, many argue, leaves girls all mixed up: while they excel in school and outpace their male peers in science and math, they also obsess about Prince Charming and who has the prettiest dress, learning-from a mix of mass marketing and media-not that girls are strong, smart, or creative, but that each is a little princess of her own, judged by the beauty of her face (and gown). And the ultrafeminine messages that come along with it. Yes, she's talking about the princess complex-the little-girl love affair that starts with Cinderella and ends with sheets and toothbrushes and cups and tiaras and home décor and pint-size wedding gowns and myriad other products. In her new book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Orenstein documents her struggle to do just that: raise a daughter who is happy and self-confident amid a world that encourages little girls to engulf their rooms in pink chiffon and rhinestone tiaras. What if, after all that, I wasn't up to the challenge myself? What if I couldn't raise the ideal daughter?"
"I was supposed to be an expert on girls' behavior. "I was terrified at the thought of having a daughter," she writes. All of which is why, when Orenstein got pregnant, she kept to herself a dirty secret. Peggy Orenstein knows this all too well: she's written about girls for years as a critic for The New York Times, and her 1994 book Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap was a bestseller (as was her 2007 one).
When it comes to raising girls, today's moms have plenty to worry about: self-image, depression, eating disorders, and, of course, a culture that teaches women that their worth is as much about their beauty as it is about their smarts.
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