Cinderella Ate My Daughter

by Peggy Orenstein

  Let’s review: princesses avoid female bonding. Their goals are to be saved by a prince, get married (among the DP picture books at Barnes & Noble: My Perfect Wedding and Happily Ever After Stories) and be taken care of for the rest of their lives. Their value derives largely from their appearance. They are rabid materialists. They might affect your daughter’s interest in math. And yet . . . parents cannot resist them. Princesses seem to have tapped into our unspoken, nonrational wishes. They may also assuage our fears: Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty may be sources of comfort, of stability in a rapidly changing world. Our daughters will shortly be tweeting and Facebooking and doing things that have yet to be invented, things that are beyond our ken. Princesses are uncomplicated, classic, something solid that we can understand and share with them, even if they are a bit problematic. They provide a way to play with our girls that is similar to how we played, a common language of childhood fun. That certainly fits into what Disney found in a survey of preschool girls’ mothers: rather than “beautiful,” the women more strongly associate princesses with “creating fantasy,” “inspiring,” “compassionate.”

  And “safe.” That one piqued my interest. By “safe,” I would wager that they mean that being a Princess fends off premature sexualization, or what parents often refer to as the pressure “to grow up too soon.” There is that undeniable sweetness, that poignancy of seeing girls clomp off to the “ball” in their incongruous heels and gowns. They are so gleeful, so guileless, so delightfully delighted. The historian Gary Cross, who writes extensively on childhood and consumption, calls such parental response “wondrous innocence.” Children’s wide-eyed excitement over the products we buy them pierces through our own boredom as consumers and as adults, reconnecting us to our childhoods: it makes us feel again. The problem is that our very dependence on our children’s joy erodes it: over time, they become as jaded as we are by new purchases—perhaps more so. They rebel against the “cuteness” in which we’ve indulged them—and, if we’re honest, imposed upon them—by taking on the studied irony and indifferent affect of “cool.”

  Though both boys and girls engage in that cute-to-cool trajectory, for girls specifically, being “cool” means looking hot. Given that, then, there may indeed be, or at least could be, a link between princess diadems and Lindsay Lohan’s panties (or lack thereof ). But in the short term, when you’re watching your preschooler earnestly waving her wand, it sure doesn’t feel that way. To the contrary: princess play feels like proof of our daughters’ innocence, protection against the sexualization it may actually be courting. It reassures us that, despite the pressure to be precocious, little girls are still—and ever will be—little girls. And that knowledge restores our faith not only in wonder but, quite possibly, in goodness itself. Recall that the current princess craze took off right around the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and continued its rise through the recession: maybe, as another cultural historian suggested to me, the desire to encourage our girls’ imperial fantasies is, at least in part, a reaction to a newly unstable world. We need their innocence not only for consumerist but for spiritual redemption.

  Sound far-fetched? This is not the first time princess obsession has cropped up during a time of societal crisis. The original European fairy tales rose from a medieval culture that faced all manner of economic and social upheaval. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book A Little Princess was published in 1905, a time of rapid urbanization, immigration, and spiraling poverty; Shirley Temple’s film version was a hit during the Great Depression. Little Shirley may actually be the ultimate example of girlish innocence conferring adult salvation (with the comic pages’ Little Orphan Annie a close second). A mere six years old when she starred in her first film, with her irrepressible, childlike optimism she gave Americans hope during a desperate era: President Franklin Roosevelt even reportedly proclaimed, “As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right.” Imagine! Her cinematic formula—which typically included at least one dead parent so adults in the audience could project themselves into that vacant role—put her at the top of the box office for three years running, beating out Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, and Gary Cooper. She remains the most popular child star of all time. She also became the first celebrity aggressively marketed to little girls. During the height of her fame, there were Shirley Temple songbooks, handkerchiefs, jewelry, handbags, sewing cards, coloring books, soap, mugs, dresses, hair bows, records—anything that could carry her image did, and the appetite for her seemed endless. Like the Disney Princesses, the first Shirley Temple doll was released independently of a movie—in time for Christmas 1934. Within a year, it accounted for a third of all doll sales. Another doll, released to coincide with both a film and Shirley’s eighth birthday, was, according to the company that manufactured it, “the biggest non-Christmas toy event in history.” Though I doubt parents in that era were (consciously or not) trying to prolong girls’ innocence through those dolls, they were surely celebrating it—perhaps, after a fashion, even feeding off it: if Shirley herself gave the country’s morale a boost during hard times, perhaps her likeness, cradled in the arms of a beaming daughter, gave heart to individual families.

  Unlike animated royalty, however, Shirley Temple was a flesh-and-blood girl, whose reign could not go on indefinitely—she had no choice but to relinquish the crown once she entered puberty. What’s more, unlike much of today’s princess schlock, Shirley Temple dolls were synonymous with quality: they ran a whopping $4.49, which was almost quadruple the price of competing dolls. In that way, they were less like the Disney Princesses and closer to what seems—at least at first glance—like the princess antidote: the upscale, down-to-earth American Girl collection.

  Ten-year-old Sophie is no longer into American Girl. That’s what her mother, my friend Karen, reported apologetically when I invited them to join me for a jaunt to American Girl Place, the brand’s Mecca-like store in Manhattan. Eventually Sophie agreed to go, if reluctantly. For research. Because, as I said, she was no longer into American Girl. She was no longer into it—until she got there.

  American Girl Place, which sits on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 49th Street, across from Saks, contains three stories of dolls, dresses, books, and the most cunning miniature furniture you have ever seen. It houses a doll hospital (where, after “treatment,” repaired dolls are returned with a hospital gown, an identification bracelet, a “Get Well Soon” balloon, and a certificate of good health) and a hair salon (where stylists strap dolls into tiny barber’s chairs for facials and new ’dos). There is also a café, where I had cadged a coveted reservation for the three of us plus Sophie’s doll Kaya.

  There was no line around the block when we arrived, as there routinely had been several years before when the store first opened, but, on a dreary winter afternoon, there were still throngs of little girls streaming in, most of them already clutching dolls or toting them in specially designed backpacks.

  “Mama, look!” Sophie cried, pointing to a blue wrought-iron daybed with butterfly-themed linen and its own trundle.

  “Sophie, look!” Karen replied half jokingly, pointing at a book with a pink-and-turquoise cover titled Clutter Control.

  Sophie ignored her, looking eagerly around. “Can I get two things?” she asked.

  “Let’s see what you choose,” Karen said firmly. But Sophie was already running toward the escalator to check out the second floor.

  American Girl was born in 1986, started by a former teacher, TV reporter, and textbook editor named—I kid you not—Pleasant Rowland. Pleasant conceived of her dolls one holiday season while shopping for presents for her nieces. Every doll she saw seemed to be either cheaply made, unattractive, or fashion-obsessed. And nothing, she felt, communicated “anything about what it meant to be a girl growing up in America.” Rather than a bucket of Barbies, Rowland dreamed of offering girls a doll they would treasure, that would forge a bond between mothers and daughters, that could even become an heirloom, passed from generatio
n to generation. She wanted her dolls to offer an alternative, morally inspiring vision of girlhood, one that would, in the process, express her own passion for history. The American Girl dolls in the historical line, then, represented different eras in the country’s past: among them were Kirsten, “a pioneer girl of strength and spirit”; Felicity, “a spunky Colonial girl”; Addy, a “courageous girl” who escapes slavery (who is still the only black girl in the historical line); and Kaya, Sophie’s doll, a Nez Percé Indian from the mid–eighteenth century. The dolls are eighteen inches high with notably realistic, childlike proportions—no Barbie bosoms here, though at a hefty $110 per doll, they are also up to twenty times as expensive. Six books (purchased separately) tell each doll’s story. Their worlds can be re-created with astonishingly detailed period clothing, furniture, and other paraphernalia. The kit for Kit, a Depression-era girl who dreams of being a journalist, includes a miniature “reporter’s set” with an authentic-looking leather-bound notebook, tiny pencil, and eraser; a period camera (complete with box of Kodak film and five preshot photos); and a stack of newspapers, tied with twine, showing her byline splashed across the front page.

  Be still, my heart! I thought, leaning in to get a closer look.

  Eavesdropping as we strolled through the store, I noticed that, like me, the mothers were captivated by the tiny jars of canned peaches, the realistic 1930s cookstove, the wee 1940s-style chifforobe with its faux cut-glass mirrors and hanging quilted dress bag.

  The girls, on the other hand, were into the clothes.

  “I want the pink dress!” a blond four-year-old screeched twenty-four times in the space of thirty seconds. Her mother finally grabbed it off the rack.

  The formula was brilliant: moms were hooked by the patina of homespun values and the Antique Road Show aesthetic of the accessories; then the girls angled for fashions. Most walked out laden with some of each.

  By 1998, the Pleasant Company was pulling down more than $300 million in annual sales. That year brought two changes: the first American Girl Place opened (the dolls had previously been sold exclusively through mail order), and Pleasant sold her empire to Mattel—the maker of the same disposable doll she had been trying to combat. You can’t really blame the woman, though: who wouldn’t compromise an ideal or two for a $700 million payday? Mattel has since added the Just Like You line, which jettisons the historical format, letting girls customize dolls with hair, eye color, and skin tone that matches their own (outfits and furnishings to bring the dolls’ “stories” alive sold separately). They also partnered with Bath & Body Works to produce a Real Beauty product line, though that did not last: maybe even Mattel recognized the contradiction in telling an eight-year-old that a perfume called “Truly Me” would help her feel good about “just being yourself.”

  Before my visit, I was familiar with American Girl only through the books, which I had flipped through at the public library. The titles in each series are identical: Meet [doll’s name]; [doll’s name] Learns a Lesson; [doll’s name]’s Surprise; Happy Birthday, [doll’s name]; [doll’s name] Saves the Day; and Changes for [doll’s name]. In one typical story, Molly, a “loveable, patriotic girl growing up on the home front during World War II” whose father is fighting in Europe, plays a series of pranks on her pesky brother. Eventually the stakes escalate, and she learns that peace can be harder than war. Our heroines may confront a smidgen of sexism, racism, or even, on occasion, tragedy, but nothing a little pluck and ingenuity can’t conquer. Which is fine with me: it’s not as though I would want my seven-year-old exposed to the details of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Reading the books, though, I was struck by their presentation of the past as a time not only in which girls were improbably independent, feisty, and apparently without constraint but, in a certain way, in which they were more free than they are today: a time when their character mattered more than their clothing, when a girl’s actions were more important than how she looked or what she owned—a time before girlhood was consumed and defined by consumerism. I found myself comparing Kit, the courageous, impoverished Depression-era girl who is committed to becoming a muckraking reporter, to Yasmin, a character from Bratz.com, which competes for the same six- to eleven-year-old demographic: Yasmin has “got a lot of strong opinions and loves to share them,” “enjoys curling up with a cool autobiography about celebs she admires,” and blogs about “staying involved with your community while still doing fun things like getting makeovers.”

  Suddenly American Girl’s price tag didn’t look so bad.

  And maybe it wouldn’t be, if the doll and books were the end of it. But that little cookstove would set you back $68 and the chifforobe another $175. For doll furniture. Therein lies the paradox of American Girl: the books preach against materialism, but you could blow the college fund on the gear. In fact, Kit, Addy, Molly, and their friends could never afford the dolls that represent them—an irony that became particularly piquant in fall 2009 with the introduction of Gwen, a $95 limited-edition doll who was supposed to be homeless. The truth is, I asked Sophie and Karen to join me on this outing because Daisy had not yet heard about American Girl, and I was not eager to hasten her discovery. It’s not that I object to the dolls, exactly, and I surely understand supporting a girl’s interest in the line, but I would prefer to stave it off, if not avoid it entirely: there has to be a less expensive way to encourage old-fashioned values.

  We headed up the escalator to the café, a black-and-white-striped confection iced with pink daisies and whimsical mirrors. Inside, dolls were seated in clip-on “treat seats” and given their own striped cups and saucers. Everything was for sale: the doll seat ($24), the tea set ($16), the pot that held the daisies ($8). All around us mothers were smiling, nibbling their quiche, reveling in this New York reprieve from the pressures of Paris (Hilton, that is). While my gaze was elsewhere, Sophie took a bite of a cucumber slice and slipped it onto Kaya’s plate, then pretended the doll had eaten it. She was ten years old but, swept away by the moment, was willing to believe in the kind of magic she already knew was not real. They might as well have put up a sign: check your cynicism at the door. I was happy to comply.

  Almost. It turned out that Kaya, like Disney’s Pocahontas, did not inspire a lot in the way of outfits or accessories. Not fun. Sophie asked if she could buy a new doll using money she had been saving from her birthday and allowance. Karen hesitated—this was the child who wasn’t “into” American Girl anymore—but then agreed. She even sprang for matching girl-doll outfits ($107) as well as a $20 salon appointment for Kaya. Then she bought the daybed and trundle ($68) because, well . . . even Karen didn’t know why. “I can’t believe I’m succumbing!” she moaned. When we got to the cash register, she was told the butterfly bedding was sold separately—for another $26. Karen sighed in disgust. “Are you writing this down?” she said to me. She turned to the salesclerk. “Okay, I’ll get the bedding.”

  She slapped down her AmEx. “My husband is going to think I’ve lost my mind,” she muttered.

  I glanced across the street to the window display at Saks Fifth Avenue. It held a hypnotically spinning red-and-white-striped disc with two words in the center in tall black letters: WANT IT. The same phrase ran endlessly around the window’s edge. At least, I thought, that store was up front about its agenda.

  Pleasant Rowland herself has called the dolls something mothers can “do” for their girls. But as Sophie, Karen, and I trudged eastward on 49th Street, our arms weighted down by giant shopping bags, it occurred to me that you don’t “do” $500 worth of merchandise. You buy it. It is a peculiar inversion: the simplicity of American Girl is expensive, while the finery of Princess comes cheap. In the end, though, the appeal to parents is the same: both lines tacitly promise to keep girls young and “safe” from sexualization. Yet they also introduce them to a consumer culture that will ultimately encourage the opposite—one in which Mattel and Disney (the parent companies, respectively, of the two brands) play a major role. Both Princ
ess and American Girl promote shopping as the path to intimacy between mothers and daughters; as an expression, even for five-year-olds, of female identity. Both, above all, are selling innocence. And nothing illustrates the gold mine it has become—or the contradictions it represents—better than the color pink.

  Chapter Three - Pinked!

  The annual Toy Fair at New York’s Javits Center is the industry’s largest trade show, with 100,000 products spread over 350,000 feet of exhibition space. And I swear, at least 75,000 of those items were pink. I lost count of the myriad pink wands and crowns (feathered, sequined, and otherwise bedazzled) and infinite permutations of pink poodles in purses (with names like Pucci Pups, Fancy Schmancy, Sassy Pets, Pawparazzi . . . ). The Disney Princesses reigned over a new pink Royal Interactive Kitchen with accompanying pink Royal Appliances and pink Royal Pots and Pans set (though I would have thought one of the perks of monarchy would be that someone else did the cooking). There were pink dinnerware sets emblazoned with the word PRINCESS; pink fun fur stoles and boas; pink princess beds; pink diaries (embossed with PRINCESS, BALLERINA, or butterflies); pink jewelry boxes; pink vanity mirrors, pink brushes, and toy pink blow-dryers; pink telephones; pink bunny ears; pink gowns; pink height charts; a pink Princess and the Pea board game (one square instructed, “Wave like a princess, pretty as you can be”); My Little Pink Book Board Game (“a cool game for girls in which they secretly choose a dream date from their Little Pink Book of guys and then try to be the first to guess who everyone else is dating”); and a pink toy washing machine. All of those, however, were perhaps to be expected. Less explicable were the pink spy kits; pink roll-aboard suitcases; pink cameras; a giant pink plush squid (which, from behind, looked exactly like a giant penis); a pink plush boa constrictor; a pink plush beanstalk (or really any plush beanstalk); pink rocking horses; pink cowgirl hats (“There’s something wrong here,” I heard one toy store buyer comment, “it needs rhinestones or glitter or something to sell”); pink gardening gloves; pink electric pianos; pink punching balls; pink gumball machines (with pink gumballs); pink kites; pink pool toys; pink golf clubs, sleds, tricycles, bicycles, scooters, and motorcycles, and even a pink tractor. Oh, and one pink neon bar sign flashing LIVE NUDES.