Tonight is perfect for live blogging about the criticisms of Disney Princesses. The source I am using for this post and also my research paper are parts from the book by Peggy Orenstein called “Cinderella Ate My Daughter”, which was published by HarperCollins Publishers in 2011.
10:23 PM: Orenstein doesn’t understand, “since when did every little girl become a princess” (page 4)? She then goes on to compare her childhood to her daughter now who switched to being a “girly” girl after a boy told her that girls don’t like trains. After that Daisy, the author’s daughter, put her trains at the bottom of her toy chest and started obsessing over the Disney Princesses and wearing princess dresses and heels. It even got the point where people they met in restaurants and even at the dentist office referred to her as a princess and offered her to sit in the ‘princess chair’ and eat the ‘princess meal.’ What I don’t understand is why is this such a big deal according to author? Yes Daisy shouldn’t have given up her trains because of what the boy said, but it is normal for her to try new things and step out of her comfort zone.
10:35 PM: Orenstein goes on to talk about what happened when she found Daisy lying on the ground at the playground during recess. She was confused as to what was going on so a boy explained to her that Daisy was pretending to be Snow White and was waiting for the perfect prince to wake her up. The author was very displeased with this because she intentionally never told Daisy this story because of the obvious sexism. If Peggy didn’t want this to happen, she should have told the story of Snow White, but explain her views on why she believes this story is inappropriate for little girls.
10:43 PM: It seems for a second Peggy is supporting the Disney Princesses by saying “They were, until late 2009, the brownest-skinned princesses, as well as the ones with the least bling potential” (page 14), referring to Mulan and Pocahontas. This was short lived though, saying how she rarely finds items of those princesses in stores. This honestly isn’t a bad thing. Disney decides which princesses they want to make clothes and other items of, it depends on what the consumers demand from them. If customers aren’t buying things that involve Mulan and Pocahontas, Disney isn’t going to waste the money to produce those items.
10:53 PM: Orenstein puts a twist on this situation and looks at how boys are affected. In this part of the chapter Daisy is playing dress up and says, “Mom, did you know that girls can choose all kinds of things to wear, but boys can only wear pants (page 21)? When she said this, the author was waiting for Daisy to say this, that dress up was something she could do, not something she had to do. She goes on to say how there was a boy that had a pink bike, but wouldn’t ride it because people made fun of him. This, according to Orenstein, proves that boys would wear pink and sequins if they could. Boys say that their dads would say it was “bad” if they would play with girls toys. This shows how dads let girls play with whatever they want, but force masculinity onto their sons.
Orenstein definitely opened my eyes to see how parents might view the effects Disney Princesses have on their children. This is a valuable source for my paper because she gives by official sources as well as her own experiences and opinions on the situation at hand. After reading this I am going to incorporate parental views into my paper to see if they believe that Disney movies teach their children life lessons, or are bad for them to watch. The only downside of this book is that it is about all of the negative aspects of Disney Princesses. When something positive is mentioned it is quickly shot down. This will be a valuable resource for the counterargument section of my paper. Hopefully there are more books like this to help further my research, but include more positivity.