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I need this book!
What I’ve Read: Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein
After we found out that we were having a girl, a friend recommended this book to me and I hadn’t gotten a chance to check it out until now. I read a few reviews of the book on Amazon before starting it, and I have to say—I agree mostly with what I read there.
Orenstein has a clear anti-consumer agenda that she demonstrates through calculated attacks on some of the most prevalent “girlie” or “pink” products on the market. Barbie, the Disney Princesses, Bratz dolls and even American Girl dolls fall under the weight of her sweeping statements on how they may affect the current generation of girls in a profoundly negative way.
She makes some very interesting, very thought-provoking points throughout the book. Although I felt that the book was under-researched (or perhaps just not written in a way that highlighted the breadth of her research), there’s no doubt that the types of toys that girls play with today are different than the toys I had a quarter century ago. Additionally, Orenstein’s points on how girls develop “princess” complexes and how the girlie-girl consumer emphasis affects female sexuality in the long term fascinated me. (What fascinated most about those points was how similar adult female bloggers seem to have carried over those same “girlie-girl,” domestic caretaker generalizations that Orenstein says are a result of the type of play now being encouraged by mass media and toy manufacturers.)
On the other hand, despite how toys have changed, a lot of things have stayed the same. I played with Barbies and American Girl dolls as a child. I played dress up, “princesses,” and watched Disney movies. Like one Amazon reviewer pointed out, Orenstein’s narrative “seemed to get overly alarmist” at various points, and I have to agree. Although I generally keep opinions to myself on this blog, I personally hold many feminist points of view on various topics and consider myself to have a minimum amount of “girlie-girl” brainwashing holdovers from my encounters with American Girl dolls.
I think this book would have been more valuable if Orenstein had taken a step back and looked at the bigger picture of what her little nuggets of information represented. The information by itself may be interesting, but where do we take it from there? She offers up almost no suggestions on how to counteract the harmful side effects she’s presenting and it leaves the reader confused about where to proceed next. Personally, I think a good rule of thumb for all things in life is everything in moderation—Disney Princesses included.
Have you read this book? What did you think? Do you have any thoughts on this topic?
