Today TJ and Cedar went shopping for new shoes.
Among all the pink sneakers available to little girls was a particularly awful Disney Princesses pair featuring Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, and Belle. Cedar saw them and was sold. Here’s the text of the conversation:
Cedar: Daddy! I want the Cinderella shoes!
TJ (thinking): Shit. We’re not buying shoes today.
TJ (gesturing to a less sexist pair of shoes): You can’t run as fast in those as you can in these.
Cedar (magically falling for his line of reasoning): Let’s try them on!
Yes, my daughter is being raised in a household where speed is the deal closer.
Yes, her dad rocks, can think on his feet, and hates the Disney Princesses as much as I do.
Take that, Disney Princesses and your sexist, girl-destroying bullshit. We may not be able to hold you off much longer. You’re growling and clawing at the door, but like people trapped in a house surrounded by zombies, we’ll live to see another day. We won this battle.
Yeh for him!!!!
Hip hip hooray! My daughters are 7 and 3 and we have so lost this battle in our house. Did you know “princessing” is a verb? It is my girls favorite sport. I still won’t buy anything with the actual Disney princesses on it, but it is a constant battle. My seven year old says that the reason she was a fussy baby is that I didn’t dress her in pink ruffled princessy stuff. She hates her baby pictures because she is mostly wearing blue or red or baby Carhartts. And a grumpy face. I never would have guessed.
It is soooo hard raising girls in this culture, isn’t it? And boys too, I know. It’s hard raising any kids to be respectful and loving and critical of consumerism. But it is especially hard to raise girls who don’t anchor their entire sense of self-worth to their beauty (as defined by hollywood and magazines).
I wish I could say I had a creative way of bucking the dominant culture, but I don’t. I just refuse to buy that crap. My kids have learned (although they still test me every single time) that I do not buy any shoes that have characters on them. Just can’t do it.
Bravo!!! Well done!
Well done.
The Disney Princesses- one more reason i’m glad I have a boy!!
How does Disney destroy woman? Should a woman’s worth be measured in man’s terms? Is it wrong to have beauty that is purely feminine as well as a beauty that is purely masculine? Just randomly found you and these Q’s came to mind after reading the first post…
P.S. I’m very much against the feminist movement and strongly believe that movement has been what’s destroyed our young woman of today.
Well, Frigga, I agree that feminism has made women what they are today. It’s made me confident, contributed to my itellectual growth, and informs my roles as mother and wife every day in a most positive way.
As for the rest, I’ll it to the very capable subartic mama to answer if she so chooses.
That’s “I’ll leave it..” And with typos like that, who needs me?
To each her own.
Thank you for being open to my comment.
Frigga – I’d like to take a stab at your “How does Disney destroy women?” question. From my point of view, and considering just, say, Cinderella (we could go through all of the princesses later) – Cinderella has everything going for her – she’s smart, she’s hardworking, she’s cheerful, beautiful, loving, sweet, and caring (most of these are “feminine” virtues. That’s fine.) But her whole life is one big vapid *wait* until she snares the prince. Why couldn’t she have broken out of the stepmother’s house without him? Why couldn’t she have done something rather than exist in drudgery until the magic wheels started turning?
I’d like my daughter to grow up knowing that she is all of the Cinderella was – *and* also responsible for her own life choices and happiness.
I have got to remember that! Your hubs has a great mind!
My girls are 9 and 11. We had the Disney Princesses invade our home as well about 5 years ago. And what I can tell you is that it is just a phase! Last Spring I had the girls go through their closets and pull out the clothes that were getting too small for them.
They groaned because it was too much like “clean your room”, but dutifully they fell into the task. I left them to it. When I came back later, I was amazed to find a HUGE pile of clothes.
I applauded them, but later I looked through the pile cuz I realized a pattern as to what was in it. Not everything was too small, but it was all PINK! My youngest daughter, the camouflage kid, had gotten rid of every item of clothing that had pink on it!
So unless Disney starts dressing their princesses in camo, we won’t be seeing their faces around here anymore! YEAH!
To cheryl
Maybe cinderella didn’t leave because abused chidren will often do anything to gain thier guardians love and the nice prince saved her, with the help of her fairy godmother, he showed her what life on the outside was like and made her burn with a desire for it.
I love princesses and all that crap but do respect the disgust that it manifests in many mothers of girls.
Yay for your DH and being quick on his feet articmama.
I have a 4 year old and feel in an odd way that I have triumphed in this battle, or at least found some peace with it, to the extent that it can be won, but mostly by avoiding the battle completely — by having a nearly TV free home and also by not taking her to stores with me very often (where all that gorgeous stuff is beckoning (they are beautful and often shiny — who wouldn’t want it?). I have a post on my struggle, if you are interested, it’s:
http://outside-the-toybox.com/finding-peace-with-princess/2007/07/27/
If that is super rude blog ettiquitte, please let me know. I’m in my first trimester and still getting a clue.
But, as a funny aside, I especially avoid taking her shopping for shoes and clothes for this reason among others, so I’ve taken to actually tracing her foot on cardboard and taking this foot out with me shopping. Ridiculous! It worked in the summer though – I came home with 3 pairs of sandals and since she never saw the hello kitty or cinderella options, she LOVED them.
I love your dh and your daughter. LOVE THEM.
Har har har. I’m a professor — did you like the way I spelled etiquette? I’m a moron.
We don’t allow the Princesses in our house. It’s been NO from the beginning. That hasn’t stopped my 5-year-old from being interested in them. (She’s also the one that told me that she was going to have a “Bratz Girl” birthday party after I was dead.) For now it’s enough that she knows I disapprove of them; explaining the reasons why will come later.
That is seriously awesome! Go feminist families! Go feminist dads!
i totally disagree with you all. im sorry but your poor kids. u let boys have lightening mcqueen, and hes an arse at the start of the film, yet you wont let them have princesees who are always nice. Sleeping beauty is always nice to everyone, belle loves books and jasmine is awesome. she tells alladin she is not a pize to be won, and i quote that. let your kids grow up making their own choices. i have always loved disney princess and it has not made me any less of my own person. if it is getting on with their lives you are worried about, well i have a life, a boyfriend, and 2 jobs. my bf comes last priority, even after my friends, although he is a very important part of life. to close, i just want to point out that you are actually controlling them more than the films by making them think there is something wrong with looking nice or having a boyfriend, ergo, you are making them stereotype other girls.
ps very sorry, i agree alos partially with tropicalmama. only just seen her message
So you think Disney Princesses destroy young women? Well I’m a university student, I believe firmly in equal rights and can be very feminist, I always hate the “damsel in distress” characters but I find there is nothing wrong with Disney princesses. What I find is wrong, is the parents/adults/academics who have perverted the ideal of these characters and forced their own rather stupid and nonsensical opinions onto children.
Have any of you disney haters actually watched these movies when you were children? I sure did and yet I never had the desire to wait for a handsome prince or be really skinny or anything. Every little girl wants to be a princess, don’t restrict children’s imaginations, thats unfair and the world is just no fun without dreams, wishes and fairytales. While I loved Disney all my life, I wanted to be a paleontologist at the age of 7 which is hardly an airheaded goal. The likes of Belle, Ariel and Jasmine are not stupid bimbos, voicing your opinions is powerful too as a true feminist should know and that is exactly what these girls do, you don’t have to wield a sword to be brave.
Yes Cinderella and Snow White can seem a little bit domestic and weak but you need to remember their context. As fairytales they are old and from a time when this was the norm and even when Disney did them over this is still the 30s and the 50s where females were still not treated as equals in society. Being a feminist doesn’t mean you have to throw reason and logic out the window, just understand the times these stories were made. Give your kids a bit more credit, they’re not stupid but theres certainly far worse out there than Disney…