Battling the Disney Princess Problem

When my daughter was born, I resolved to protect her from all kinds of evil. Chief among them was the most insidious of them all: the Disney Princesses. To me, these ubiquitous symbols of American girlhood encapsulated all that was wrong with a society obsessed with overly romanticized versions of love and distorted interpretations of beauty.

I wanted my daughter to grow up with real role models, not caricatures of the female form, devoid of the character and substance of actual women. I agree that the classic Disney films are iconic works of art in our popular culture, but the tempered feminist within me thinks that is what they should remain. Yet instead of art, they are often held up as paragons of womanhood for little girls, even if unintentionally.

Most of the modernized Disney films are only slightly improved. The heroines are typically thrust into feeble morality tales with politically correct agendas in a pathetic attempt to provide wholesome entertainment that is often just barely either.

Thus, I made a concerted effort to keep my infant daughter’s environment thoroughly de-Disney-Princess-ized. I knew that it would happen soon enough, but I certainly was not going to contribute to it. I shied away from trademarked characters, but if I was forced to choose, she was going to get Dora and Elmo, not some ditzy Princess.

Unfortunately, the end came upon me far too suddenly and soon. It all began innocently enough.  A good friend with two doting daughters slightly older than my own told me her girls had been begging to “babysit.”  They were not old enough to babysit, she explained, but she would supervise while the girls entertained my two-year-old. The offer of a three-hour break of uninterrupted “me-time” was too tempting and I acquiesced. After all, my friend was an unquestionably outstanding mother and all her kids had turned out fantastic.  What could possibly go wrong?

When I arrived at her home to collect my daughter, she informed me that all the girls were upstairs playing (apparently, her two girls had invited two other neighborhood girls to join them in their “babysitting” venture).

I walked upstairs, opened the bedroom door and a tragic scene unfolded before me: the four older girls were seated in a circle around my daughter, who was transfixed by several doll figurines lined up in front of her. The oldest girl methodically pointed to each one, singsonging, “This one is Snow White, and this one is Cinderella, and this one is Aurora, and this one is Belle…”

I stifled my panic and calmly but swiftly scooped up my daughter and said our thank yous and goodbyes.  As I drove home, I marveled at how four adorable, well-intentioned girls had just wiped out two years of my hard work in less than 10 minutes.

After the floodgates were opened, there was no going back. That very afternoon, my daughter asked for her own Disney princesses. Obviously, I said no.  But five years later, her room now looks like the Disney store blew up in it. She has a Disney Princess magic talking vanity table, Disney Princess costumes, Disney Princess clothes and underwear, Disney Princess beach towels and the pièce de résistance: an oversized wall decal of Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

What I learned was that it is futile to try to barricade your child from the world’s influences.  No matter how hard you try, unless you lock them in a tower, the world always somehow manages to break in (and we see how well that strategy worked for Rapunzel’s mother).

A more effective tactic is equipping your child for the influences the world will inevitably introduce to them. Since the Disney Princess incident, I have not only allowed my daughter to accumulate a vast amount of Princess paraphernalia, I have had countless conversations with her about the values I want her to have about her appearance and seeing beyond people’s exteriors.  I regularly ask her what she thinks about societal messages about beauty and character and we discuss the difference between reality and fantasy. 

I know the real testing ground—adolescence—is still to come and I am not so naïve to think she will not have any struggles.  However, I am hopeful that she will be better prepared to handle the crises that come her way with her eyes wide open and brain fully engaged.  Not too unlike Belle in “Beauty and the Beast.”