Author Peggy Orenstein
Price: $15.59
Book Description
Pink and pretty or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as a source—the source—of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages.
But, realistically, how many times can you say no when your daughter begs for a pint-size wedding gown or the latest Hannah Montana CD? And how dangerous is pink and pretty anyway—especially given girls' successes in the classroom and on the playing field? Being a princess is just make-believe, after all; eventually they grow out of it. Or do they? Does playing Cinderella shield girls from early sexualization—or prime them for it? Could today's little princess become tomorrow's sexting teen? And what if she does? Would that make her in charge of her sexuality—or an unwitting captive to it?
Those questions hit home with Peggy Orenstein, so she went sleuthing. She visited Disneyland and the international toy fair, trolled American Girl Place and Pottery Barn Kids, and met beauty pageant parents with preschoolers tricked out like Vegas showgirls. She dissected the science, created an online avatar, and parsed the original fairy tales. The stakes turn out to be higher than she—or we—ever imagined: nothing less than the health, development, and futures of our girls. From premature sexualization to the risk of depression to rising rates of narcissism, the potential negative impact of this new girlie-girl culture is undeniable—yet armed with awareness and recognition, parents can effectively counterbalance its influence in their daughters' lives.
Cinderella Ate My Daughter is a must-read for anyone who cares about girls, and for parents helping their daughters navigate the rocky road to adulthood.
Book Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #93 in Books
- Published on: 2011-02-01
- Released on: 2011-01-25
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 256 pages
Customer Reviews
What's next for our girls?
First of all, I'm a new father. Of a girl. Naturally I find myself wondering how on earth I am going to raise a confident, considerate and well adjusted girl in these complicated times. I also noticed that sometimes people's eyebrows would raise as they saw me reading this book in public. Trust me. This book is a worthwhile read for mothers AND fathers.
What this book has proven to be is an alarming expose of the numerous pitfalls our culture has created for girls. Orenstein humorously and cuttingly tackles issues such as the marketing schemes of the "disney princess brand", "pink explosion" of products marketed toward girls, the pattern of teen-icon role-models who go from "wholesome" to "whoresome" as they mature (even the seemingly incorruptible Miley Cyrus succumbed to it as she got older). AKA don't pose for Vanity Fair. The book is well researched and makes a compelling case for all parents to be concerned about the future of their daughters.
Orenstein's agenda is liberally slanted with an anti-consumer agenda, and you can tell because there's some obvious HRC/Palin comparisons in the book, but what would you expect from a lady living in Berekely, California? A Santa Cruz resident, myself, I didn't find these insertions bothersome, but to the politically conservative I advice a grain of salt.
At times the narrative seemed to get overly alarmist, raising red flags about things which I personally wouldn't worry very much. I understand why, but parts of the discussion seemed to over-stress the dangers to our nascent daughters. I just don't buy it. Meanwhile, the book offers a great amount of commentary/critique about these challenges, but provides very little of substance in terms of how to address these issues on the parental end. There are some gems scattered throughout but I found myself wishing there was more guidance for those who are struggling here. Maybe the answer is that there is no real answer, because the parenting experience is so different for everyone.
Informative and Interesting, Never Preachy
For people interested in gender politics and how they play out in advertising aimed at young girls in America, this book is an absolute delight to read. Author Orenstein examines everything from Disney Princess merchandise, American Girls dolls, the "Twilight" phenomena, Miley Cyrus (and all the "innocent-but-sexy" singers and actresses that have come before her, and will come after her yet), pageant culture, and Facebook - all through the dual lens of her own experiences as a mother and her own research as a journalist.
"Cinderella Ate My Daughter" is wonderfully written - both informative and interesting. The author has a wonderful sense of when to intersperse daily anecdotes from her own life into the meticulous studies she references and the experts she quotes. This is anything but a "fluff" book - there's so much information compiled here and it's presented in an imminently easy-to-digest format. Looking back on this book, dozens of fascinating facts leap to my mind - such as the evidence that dolls were in low vogue among girls in the late 1800's, until President Roosevelt warned the country against declining Anglo-Saxon birth rates and suddenly the race was on to prepare (certain kinds of) girls to be 'good American mothers'. Then there's the chapter about mixed-gender play and how to understand the difference between boys and girls playing WITH each other and them playing NEAR each other (and how to encourage the latter to blossom into the former). Especially impressive in this book is how the author always tries to give the opposition a fair say, even while making it clear where she falls on the spectrum - everything comes across as highly informative and extremely fair-spoken.
One thing I particularly liked about this book is how fallible-as-a-mother Orenstein is willing to be, and how kind and fair-minded she is towards the other parents in the book. She seems to really understand how difficult it is to meld high-minded principles with day-to-day parenting (for instance, in explaining WHY a Bratz doll is "inappropriate" to her 5-year-old, she's frustrated that the very CONCEPT of the inappropriateness of a "sexy" doll isn't something she wanted to get into just yet!), and I really respect that there is pretty much zero "parent bashing" here. When the author explores the "American Girls" dolls (a marketing line that she readily admits is out of the budgets of most parents and thus constitutes a minority of American girls being able to even afford the dolls), it would be easy to decry all the money "wastefully" spent on the extravagant doll clothes, but she doesn't. Even the pageant chapter is tactfully and thoughtfully written - Orenstein seems fully aware that "parent bashing" only helps to blind us to the other forms of marketing and expression that are targeted to our girls (i.e., "Sure my daughter wears a Cinderella bridal veil to kindergarten every day, but at least I don't let her dress like JonBenet!"), and so instead she uses the pageant concept to draw parallels, not to cast judgment.
I also want to note that this book struck me as very HAES-friendly and extremely insightful on how to encourage healthy body-image in young daughters - several of the experts that Orenstein quotes hit the nail on the head, I think, on the best hows-and-whens to tell your daughter that she's beautiful, and how to link that "beauty" to inner character rather than outer trappings.
For people who are interested in gender studies and girl-aimed marketing, I feel like this is a wonderful book to read. The book is easy to digest, and hard to put down - I read the whole book in two days, largely because I just didn't want to stop. Most of all, I appreciate that the author understands that the issues of gender politics and how they affect our young daughters are *complicated*, and while she tries to offer her own solutions at the end, she never sounds preachy, know-it-all, or "my way is the right way" - I think, largely because she gets that a complicated issue like this doesn't have one, pithy solution that can be easily summed up on a bumpersticker.
