Cinderella Ate My Daughter

by Peggy Orenstein

  Enter the Spice Girls. With one impossibly infectious 1996 hit, “Wannabe” (you remember: “If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends”), they plucked the rrrrage right out of “Grrrl Power,” rendering it apolitically appealing to the tweenybopper set and, more important, to their parents. Their opportunistic philosophy—most of the Pre–Fab Five had never met before auditioning for the band—was “about a positive attitude to life, getting what you want, and sticking by your friends.” Who could argue with that? The Spices also offered girls a range of identities that nonetheless let them feel part of the group, a perfect developmental fit with the band’s demographic. I recall endless conversations in which my nieces discussed which Spice they were—Sporty, Scary, Baby, Posh, or Ginger—then which Spice I was, then which Spice every female they had ever met might be, including their eighty-year-old grandmother (Old Spice, of course). It was tedious, but if not exactly grrrlishly subversive—where was Chubby Spice? Brainy Spice? Bi-Curious Spice?—it did not seem exactly offensive. At least, I figured, they weren’t obsessed with the Backstreet Boys. This was a good ten years before Hannah Montana debuted, and I appreciated seeing them scream their heads off over other girls, rocking out to music that was made for them and about them. It was actually kind of exciting: the Spices were all about the girlfriends, Girlfriend. At least, that’s what they claimed.

  Around the time the Spice Girls broke, something called “girlie feminism” was also on the rise: far less threatening than Riot Grrrls, it held that women’s traditional roles and skills (whether scrubbing floors, nurturing relationships, or knitting) had intrinsic value; that sexual equality need not require gender neutrality; that painting your nails and wearing a PORN STAR T-shirt were, if not radical acts, at least a woman’s right, a viable form of self-expression and personal pleasure. That is, if done by the right people for the right reasons with the right soupçon of irony. The arguments were provocative but difficult to control. Just as they had with Riot Grrrls, Spice Girls skimmed off the easily consumable surface of girlie feminism—cute clothes! makeup!—and tossed its transgressive core. Rather than “empowering,” then, the Spice World battle cry, “Strength and courage and a Wonderbra!” became increasingly confusing, especially to fans who weren’t old enough to know what a Wonderbra actually was. By 1998, when Ginger Spice ditched her so-called forever friends, “girl power” had devolved into little more than an empty slogan on a shrunken pink T-shirt. The phrase may have started the decade representing one irony, but it ended by expressing quite another. Those extra r’s in Riot Grrrl, which had heralded a rejection of consumerized femininity, were replaced by the now-ubiquitous z (as in Ty Girlz, Moxie Girlz, Bratz Girlz, Baby Phat Girlz, Glitter Girlz, Clique Girlz, “Disney Girlz Rock”), which embraced it. Z did not seek to expand choices, break down barriers, address injustice. Z signaled “empowerment” as the power to shop, old-school stereotypes recast as the source of liberation rather than an impediment to it.

  Disney Princesses, Miley Cyrus, child-friendly makeup, the proliferation of pink, are all outgrowths of that marketing sleight of hand. And, since the Riot Grrrls dispersed, no homegrown culture has risen up to challenge them. Mothers, meanwhile, want (really, really want, as the Spice Girls might sing) so desperately to guide their daughters to an authentic, unconflicted balance of feminism and femininity, one that will sustain rather than constrain them. Witness, for instance, the success of two “advice manuals” for girls published in 2008: The Daring Book for Girls and The Girls’ Book: How to Be the Best at Everything (as well as their endless sequels, such as The Double-Daring Book for Girls and How to Be the Best at Everything Again). Both volumes were spin-offs of The Dangerous Book for Boys, a gilt-embossed paean to old-school adventure whose tantalizing chapters on building a go-cart and making secret ink from (presumably your own) pee induced nostalgia among fathers—typically the ones purchasing the book—for their own huckleberry childhoods, those halcyon days before cable, Wii, Facebook, and cell phones. The girls’ books, however, do something entirely different. Rather than harking back to—heaven forbid!—bygone days, they evoke nostalgia for a time that has yet to be, a girlhood that we mothers may wish we’d had but did not, one that we hope will nourish our daughters and prepare them to be the kind of women we’re not sure we were fully able to become.

  The Girls’ Book, published by Scholastic, is solidly in the z camp: that extra X chromosome, it implies, stands for Xcessorize, and “having it all” comes with a hefty credit card debt. The book may advise readers on “how to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope,” but its more realistic fare includes how to “act like a celebrity,” “make your own luxury bubble bath,” and “give yourself a perfect manicure.” I’m not above seeking a little pick-me-up at the cosmetic counter myself, mind you, but I am not nine years old. Even so, in some ways, I mourn what has been taken from me by the rise of this girlz-with-a-z culture—when I was pregnant, I imagined occasionally playing “manicure” with my daughter as my mom had with me; I had a bag of old (probably bacteria-infested) lipsticks and eye shadows that I planned to bequeath to her for dress-up play. But by the time Daisy was three, I had tossed them all and become a hard-liner on all questions of nail polish and makeup. That was for grown-ups, I would tell her, not for little girls. Period. I know my response was extreme, possibly excessively so. But there was so much more out there than when I was a girl that urged her to define herself from the outside in, to believe identity was for sale; adding to all that, even in a small way, felt too much like collusion.

  The Daring Book for Girls, by contrast, makes the case for a separate-but-equal girls’ culture of play—one that, like its male counterpart, deserves resurrection and preservation. Any former girl (read: current mom) would find its chapters on jacks, hand-clap games, and that staple of Girl Scout campfires, the sit-upon—the sit-upon!!!!—pretty much irresistible. I know I did. This might be more of what the 1990s “girlie feminists”—the ones revaluing cooking and crafts—had in mind: a feminism that expects parity with boys and men, yet does not strive to be like them or see their conventional roles and behavior as more desirable. As a nod to the fact that today’s girls will not, like their forebears, live their lives in a “separate sphere” from men—as well as acknowledgment that “different” can quickly be tagged as “lesser”—the book also provides tutorials on “How to Negotiate a Salary” and “Finance: Interest, Stocks and Bonds.” Useful skills, but ones that will probably appeal primarily to mothers. Girls themselves, I would wager, will see them as the equivalent of a granola bar in the Halloween bag.

  Daring Girls was the closest thing I had seen to what I was looking for: a concept of girlhood as a community, a vision that was dynamic and character-building rather than decorative. At the same time, most of what was in the book seemed so arbitrary I wondered whether it truly upheld tradition or just created yet another trap. Segmenting play by sex, remember, may be good for sales but not necessarily for kids’ development. So you tell me which of these activities (pulled at random from the boys’ and girls’ books) seems feminine and which masculine: Building a Campfire; Making Cloth Fireproof; Fourteen Games of Tag; Five Pen-and-Paper Games; Snowballs; Cloud Formations (answers: girls, boys, girls, boys, girls, boys). Why can’t girls make crystals or juggle (those are in the boys’ book)? Why can’t boys construct a lemon-powered clock or learn Five Karate Moves (those are in the girls’ book)? Perhaps more pointedly: what about the boy who, à la How to Be the Best at Everything, wants to “put together the best dance routine”? Now, that would be “dangerous.”

  Maybe the wisest course of action would be to rip off the covers of all of the books and let children choose for themselves the activities they find feminine or masculine or just plain fun. That could even help with the kind of casual, naturally occurring interaction the Sanford program’s Carol Martin and Rick Fabes are trying to foster between boys and girls. I think Daisy would enjoy such a project (once she can read). And I would, too.


  As the school year went on, she rebounded from her disappointment and returned to superhero play, albeit mostly when she was by herself. She also added a new character to her repertoire named Wildcat: technically, he was a male superhero; she had feminized him with Batgirl ears and socks on her hands. I was not sure how I felt about that. I know that if I could imbue her with a superpower, it would be the ability to withstand the pressures of the culture around her, to be her own woman despite the potential costs: I would give her the courage of her convictions, the power to be the hero of her own story without ambivalence or fear, to embrace her gifts regardless of her body’s size or shape—even if I have not been fully able to embrace mine.

  Meanwhile, I did a little digging about Wonder Woman. It turns out her real name was Diana, daughter of Hera, queen of the Amazons. That makes her, of all things . . . a princess.

  Chapter Nine - Just Between You, Me, and My 622 BFFs

  I think it was the pig snout that put me over the line.

  I was trying to meet some girls on the Internet, to chat with them in real time about how they presented themselves on social networking sites and virtual worlds—increasingly popular fantasy landscapes in which users interact with one another through avatars. How did their online selves reflect, reinforce, or differ from who they were offline? What role did this new world have in shaping their identities, their femininity? I had started by hopping onto an award-winning educational site called Whyville, whose 5 million “citizens,” largely young teens, could play games, buy “virtual goods,” and chat electronically with one another. There is no need to “friend” a person in a virtual world, so it is easy to observe (as well as talk to) complete strangers.

  In order to go onto the site, I had to create an avatar—a word that once denoted the human incarnation of a Hindu deity. I put a lot of thought into what she (because I decided to remain a she) should look like. I ended up giving her—or was it myself ?—a whimsical, spiky purple ’do, glasses, a goofy grin, and, just for the heck of it, a pig snout for a nose. When I took that bad self “in world,” however, I found a land of girls with big hair and chunky highlights; full, glossy pouts; thickly lined doe eyes; and skimpy, fashion-forward outfits. Girls, in other words, who’d styled themselves like a line of hot, trendy dolls. Was that how they saw themselves? How they wished they looked? How they aspired to look? How they thought they should look? A cartoon bubble popped up above the head of a girl named “Sweetiepi,” whose avatar was staring directly at me. It said she was “whispering” with another girl, named OMGBrooke. I got the uneasy feeling they were discussing my snout.

  Back in the midnineties, the concern among parents and educators was that girls were not going online at the same rate as boys. A digital divide was looming, and it threatened to leave girls stranded on the wrong side of economic opportunity. That notion turned out to be sooooo twentieth century. These days, 35 million kids ages three to eighteen—80 percent of kindergartners alone—are online, though by the time you read this those numbers will surely be higher. A solid half of those users are female. Girls spend the same amount of time as boys on the Internet, but their activities differ. Predictably, more boys are gamers. They are also more likely to produce videos to post on their online profiles or sites such as YouTube. Girls, meanwhile, are out front in communication: more girls than boys blog, instant message, text, create Web pages, and join virtual worlds and social networking sites.

  I skimmed that information with mounting disapproval: kids seemed to be going online so young—maybe too young. Then I remembered that Daisy had been on the Internet, tooling around the Nick Jr. site, since she was three years old. I suspect, in fact, that she first associated the word “mouse” not with a rodent but with a piece of computer hardware. I have watched with equal parts curiosity and anxiety as she has navigated with preternatural skill through the site’s games. Her obsession with the Dora pages seemed harmless enough, but what would she do next? What would she see next?

  This was a place in my reporting, I realized, where, to gain deeper insight, I had to leave the littlest girls behind for their older sisters. For one thing, older girls can read, something that instantly expands the online experience. Beyond that, the sites for little girls were all mind-numbingly the same. The virtual worlds of BarbieGirls, Be-Bratz, Ty Girlz, Moxiegirlz were all extensions of their offline counterparts. Each featured similar games girls could play to “earn” points with which to engage in their favorite activity: shopping. They could visit virtual malls to buy stylin’ fashions for their avatars or a flat-screen TV for their virtual cribs. They could indulge in makeovers at the spa or purchase pets to pamper. They could also hone their ambitions for the future by playing at rock star or celebrity or . . . rock star or celebrity. On the New Dora’s “Dora Links,” for instance, the “mysteries and adventure” in which girls can engage include changing the length of their avatar’s hair, eye color, earrings, and necklace and getting “ready for a benefit concert.”

  The Disney Princesses site could well be crowned the dullest of them all: a user can enter the “enchanting” world of her favorite princess and, in each one, play a version of the identical game: Cinderella/Belle/Sleeping Beauty/Ariel is on her way to an important parade/fair/birthday party/tea party but— Oh no! She forgot to pick out an outfit and now doesn’t have time! Can she count on you to do it for her by clicking on one of several predetermined choices? None of this is a surprise, and I am tempted to gloss right over it. Yet more and more of children’s time is spent online. Doll sales have declined by nearly 20 percent since 2005. Girls are casting them aside in favor of online play, which offers even fewer opportunities to go off script. It chilled me to read, in the market research group NPD’s report on this trend, a quote from a nine-year-old Barbie.com fan who said, “I don’t think I’m good at making up imaginary things; I didn’t know what to do with dolls.” So it is at least worth mentioning that, even more than the original toys, these sites funnel our daughters toward very specific definitions of both girlhood and play.

  Sites for the youngest children are protected by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which requires “verifiable parental consent” at registration and restricts the amount of personal information—addresses, phone numbers, sex, preferences in music—corporate marketers can collect from children. Chatting is typically limited and inappropriate behavior punished by suspension or expulsion. Once children turn thirteen, however, all bets are off. They are legally considered adults online, free to join any site that is not X-rated (though since the age of users on those sites is rarely verified, they could join those as well). You would be hard pressed these days to find an eighth-grader without a Facebook account. Meanwhile, 3.7 million teens log on to a virtual world each month. Today’s platforms will probably be obsolete by the time Daisy is a teenager (if not by next year), but regardless of whatever Web site or matrix or brain implant arises to take their place, my questions remain the same: How will the Internet shape my daughter’s understanding of herself ? Will its vastness—its infinite nooks and crannies—intensify the contradictions of girlhood or provide opportunities for refuge? Will she lose control of her identity or gain new insight into it? And how can I, as a mom, sort out the legitimate from the sensationalist in the headlines about predators, anonymous bullying by peers, easy-access porn? (Try Googling “schoolgirls.com” or, as an eight-year-old daughter of a friend of mine innocently did, “cute girls.”)

  I am no Luddite. I am well aware of what an incredible, creative tool the Internet can be, offering split-second access to a diversity of perspectives and information that previously seemed unimaginable. But I have heard it said that we adults are immigrants to this land of technology; our kids are natives. They use it differently than we do. They experience it differently, without our old-world accents or values. Much as the mall was for a previous generation, the Internet has become a place where they experiment with identity, friendship, and flirtation. The f
act that none of it is real does not make it any less revealing.

  Erin, who is fourteen, has been online since she was in third grade. “I used to love doing the painting pages on the Dragon Tales site,” she said, laughing. “I did them until I was much too old.”

  Erin and three of her friends were sitting in her family’s Albany, California, living room. Her mother had set out an array of healthy snacks for us—hummus with carrots, fresh strawberries—but the girls shunned those for a bucket of shamrock-shaped, green frosted sugar cookies bought at the grocery store in celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day. Each one here today had been online since she was seven or eight. Each carried her cell phone as if it were a fifth limb. Each owned an iPod touch. Each used computers daily, often in the privacy of her bedroom. Naturally, they all had Facebook accounts, which, judging from my communication with them, they checked numerous times during the school day. They’d had some amazing experiences online: one of the girls, Katie, fourteen, who had been adopted as an infant, told me she had found her birth mother on Facebook. So she’d friended her. “It was an open adoption, so I always knew her name,” Katie explained, “but she’d never visited or anything. She was only seventeen when I was born.” The two ended up meeting in person some months later, when the woman passed through San Francisco. “It was cool,” Katie said, though she had no plans to see the woman again. The casual way she related the story confused me. Finding your birth mother with a few clicks—on Facebook, of all things—would seem momentous, yet Katie was treating it like it was no big deal. Maybe she was just playing it cool, but I wondered whether the unlimited possibility for connection had somehow devalued its worth.