Study suggests we might be too worried about ‘princess culture’
My youngest niece loves nothing more than a princess costume, the sparklier the better. In her social circle, a tiara is essential. She may not express the sentiment in so many words, but this chatty child believes you can never be too glamorous. How else can she fend off an older brother and convince the world that glitter is more than an after-thought?
The 4-year-old’s behavior, however, confounds my sister. It worries her. An Ivy League-trained lawyer with a couple of advanced degrees, she has worked hard to break barriers, both at home and on the job. Princess culture turns her stomach. The last thing my sister wants for her daughter — or her son, for that matter — is to abandon them to stereotypical gender roles. She has witnessed enough of that.
But children, they have a way of providing life lessons few parents expect. This is one of them.
“I don’t know where she gets this from,” my sister fretted a while back. “She’s obsessed.”
Obsession is an accurate description. After I gave my niece a plush Elsa for Christmas, the cloth doll became her shadow. Elsa accompanied her to bed, to the bathroom, to her grandparents, and she would’ve dragged the toy into the tub if her parents had allowed it. Her passion for the “Frozen” star was not an isolated incident, though. My niece has also channeled other Disney royalty.
Anyone who knows a girl of a certain age will recognize the situation. For at least a quarter century, princesses have reigned over the pre-school realm. These days we’re all on a first name basis with certain notable Disney characters, from the iconic Snow White and Cinderella to Belle, Mulan, Ariel and Tiana. Of course, controversy has accompanied that fame.
It’s fun to hate on princesses, and some parents and the media have done a pretty good job of that. About a decade ago a book by Peggy Orenstein, “Cinderella Ate My Daughter,” sparked a heated debate about the deleterious impact these princesses had on vulnerable tikes. It was right about the time my oldest granddaughters were being possessed by fairy tale women.
Their father, I remember, booked the princess experience at Disney World. It included hairstyling, makeup, a manicure, a princess sash and some kind of girly-girl gown. It cost a small fortune, but he reluctantly admitted it was worth every dime. Nevertheless, I feared we were going backward. Pundits, too, opined that we were crippling the development of our children.
But even as criticism piled on, Disney continued to rake in profits and create new role models. Over the years, the princess world evolved, became more inclusive and modern — a word I use deliberately but also with caution.
Now, a controversial study has once again fired up the debate about our girls’ inanimate playmates. Sarah Coyne, a professor at Brigham Young University, has published a follow up to her initial 2012-2013 research project, when she interviewed hundreds of 4and 5-year-old children. At that time, she concluded that “high engagement” with princess toys and movies was linked to more female-stereotypical behavior a year later, a frightening thought for moms and dads hoping to instill strength and independence in their daughters.
But, alas, her new study suggests we need not have worried. The girls who were infatuated with princesses at 5 were actually stronger advocates for female empowerment at 10 than those who had skipped that craze. What’s more, princess culture appeared to have a positive body-image effect on children from lower-income families.
Of course, one study does not make for an entire childrearing canon. But it does remind us that we can relax about our children’s toys. A plastic gun won’t make a child a murderer, and the idea of Prince Charming won’t curtail ambition. Today’s little girls seem to know that you can rule a kingdom, launch a startup, fight the enemy, man an international space center, and invent a doodad all while wearing a diamond tiara.
They are, my sister concedes, princess warriors.