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The acclaimed author of the groundbreaking bestseller Schoolgirls reveals the dark side of pink and pretty: the rise of the girlie-girl, she warns, is not that innocent.
Sweet and sassy 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 the source of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages. But how dangerous is pink and pretty, anyway? Being a princess is just make-believe; eventually they grow out of it . . . or do they?
In search of answers, Peggy Orenstein visited Disneyland, trolled American Girl Place, and met parents of beauty-pageant preschoolers tricked out like Vegas showgirls. The stakes turn out to be higher than she ever imagined. 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.
New York Times Magazine contributor Orenstein (Waiting for Daisy, 2007, etc.) investigates the impact of early sexualization on girls.
In this witty, well-documented study, the author of Schoolgirls (1994) examines the not-so-innocent side of princess culture represented by Cinderella and her sister Disney royals.Orenstein looks at the way race-based images of idealized female beauty and behavior, themselves the product of aggressive and manipulative marketing campaigns, influence preteen girls. Before they reach kindergarten, female children have already been indoctrinated in the idea that how they look is more important than who they are. Foundations have been laid for the idea that prettiness—and a narcissistic concern with the external self—is the true path to empowerment. The main issue Orenstein addresses, however, is whether Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel and Belle (and their less popular, darker-skinned counterparts, Mulan and Pocahontas) protect young girls from early sexualization or prepare them to be consumers of clothes, grooming aids, toys, music and other forms of media that seem to celebrate underage sexuality. During the course of her research, Orenstein visited the Toy Fair ("the industry's largest trade show"), specialty "girl" stores such as American Girl Palace, the Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant for preteen girls, a Miley Cyrus concert and social-networking sites such as Webkinz and Facebook. The author discovered that while girls have more role models than ever before to show them that they can become anything they wish, they are also under much greater pressure from an extraordinarily young age to prove their femininity. That Orenstein is the mother of a young, biracial daughter makes the narrative even more readable than her bestselling earlier writings on girlhood and self-esteem. Rather than writing as a concerned but detached observer, she approaches her subject as a parent seeking practical ways to negotiate a complex cultural landscape that has been as confusing for her as a mother and woman as it has been potentially damaging for the girl she is raising.
Intelligent and richly insightful.
Peggy Orenstein is the author of the New York Times bestseller Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night, and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother and Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap. A contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, she has been published in, among others, USA Today; Vogue; Parenting; O, The Oprah Magazine; Salon; and The New Yorker. Orenstein lives in Northern California with her husband and their daughter, Daisy.
Peggy Orenstein, an award-winning writer, author, and speaker concerning issues affecting girls and women, is set to come out with a new book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, this week. As an author with reportedly over 20 years of writing about women's issues, I expected more from the book. Written in a blog-like manner, it tends to be more fluff, containing more anecdotal evidence than scientific research. The concepts, while not new, still hold merit. However, I believe Orenstein would have been better off condensing the topics to the pertinent matter and writing a series of articles rather than compiling them into a book.
After the first few chapters, I began to think I never wanted to read nor hear the word pink again. More depressing is the fact that she is correct in her descriptions of our consumerist run society. Market campaigns play a much larger role in our daughters' self-views than ever before. As the author states, rather than giving girls freedom from the traditional stereotyped constraints, companies are merely packaging those constraints in a way that is geared to convince girls to chose them.
In a world where every little girl is expected to idolize packages princesses and where our home, free of the typical character royalty, is unique even among more progressive thinkers, the concepts are thought provoking for some and old hat to others. The book had potential but fell short. Readers would be better off checking out Packaging Girlhood.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of Cinderella Ate My Daughter from Harper Collins Publishers.
7 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.This woman gives feminists a bad name. Her ideals and ideas about feminity and womanhood ate antiquated at best. Quit whining about having to raise your kid and explain life to them. The woman is a pseudo intellectual with an axe to grind against Disney and that's it! She really is missing the bigger picture, it took her 51 pages to make a coherent point and keeps rambling on about being worried about sending her daughter mixed signals about feminity yet denies her girlhood and feminity at every turn. You can dress like a princess and even have the doll without buying into the whole consumer culture, parents have done it foryears. She's not even a therapist so she's hardly an expert on children or childrearing.
5 out of 11 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Nina83
Posted March 15, 2011
Every little girl is a princess and pink has pervaded our culture. Peggy Orenstein's newest book "Cinderella Ate My Daughter" is a interesting look into the so-called "girlie girl" culture. I'm very interested in reading about sneaky marketer tactics and their effects on children, and this was a new perspective.
Are we limiting our daughters by giving into their princess fantasies? Why do girls need pink baseball bats, pink camo, pink everything? Is it feminist to discourage girls toys when that just shows them that being a girl is bad or some how worth less? Orenstein tries to answer these questions and more.
Let me just say, I really enjoyed this book. I agree with some of the other reviewers that it was a bit fluffy, but for someone who is not an expert in the subject, I liked the highly personal, blogger-esque feel to it. Because of this I think it is a book that many people can read enjoyably without it being too academic. I also enjoyed that Orenstein herself seemed so relatable as a human. I was afraid that it would be preachy, talking about the wonderful things she does. Instead, she seemed very sincere and admitted her failings. I really appreciated that.
As for the content, I felt myself torn between my own experiences and the things I might want for my future children. I personally loved Disney princesses, American Girl dolls and fairy tales as a child (still do!) and don't believe that I was damaged. I want my children to be able to enjoy these things too, does this make me a bad (future) mother? But I found myself agreeing that brand name toys limit the range of play. It seems that a lot of children these days are unable to make something up themselves; could the children be stuck in the stories of the characters? I also agreed a lot with the section on the usage of the internet by children. As we see time and time again, children have been getting themselves in trouble by putting themselves on stage on the internet. How do we protect them without overprotecting them? I felt that though most of these questions remain unanswered, Orenstein is trying to open the dialogue.
All in all, I felt that this was a great introduction to thinking about how girl power could be making our daughters powerless. I believe I will read Orenstein's other works as well.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 24, 2012
Hey...
1 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 13, 2012
I am a 25 year old jewelry store manager so i understand the girly girl culture! This book answers questions you never even thought to ask. Its fabulous, funny and informative. I've read it at least three times and bought copies for all my friends. Its a gift to girls everywhere. Wheather you love pink frilly cinderella dresses or work boots its a perfect read! She doewny put anyone down, just gives the facts and science behind what makes girls tick!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Poppy44
Posted January 29, 2012
As a grandfather of three young girls, I was looking forward to sharing Disney princess movies, etc. with them; but after reading this and realizing the pervasive channeling of 'pink princess' material towards very young girls, I'm resigned to giving that up. Even though I was aware of lots of the trends, seeing how overwhelming the influences are was an eye-opening experience.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Loved it. She and I had similar thoughts and now I have some some great ideas of how to raise my daughter.
1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 8, 2011
"Cinderella ate my Daughter" is a look at how consumer culture and hyper-sexuality affects young girls, as told by a self-proclaimed expert (I'm not doubting Orenstein's credentials, I'm just too lazy to double-check them up for the purposes of reviewing this book) on raising girls, and as a mother of a young daughter (her daughter, Daisy's age is never explicitly stated [or if it is, I missed it] but it can be inferred that in the stories told, Daisy was between the ages of 3 and 8.) It is an expansion of an article written by the author for the New York Times Magazine, to which she refers within the first few pages of the book. (honestly, said article is a good place to start--if I had read it first, I wouldn't have bought this book.) Confession time--I don't have kids, and very rarely have contact with little girls. I downloaded this book because I thought it would be a good place to start for a paper I'm writing. That being said, this is the first book I've downloaded (that I don't also have a paper copy of) solely for the purpose of research. The Nook isn't really designed for research--for instance, rather than being able to click back and forth between text and notes and the bibliography, I had to bookmark, highlight and note (then on a piece of paper, re-write my notes, because, frankly, the annotation system for the Nook sucks) then look up Orenstein's notes or bibliography, and hope that I hadn't lost my place in the mean time. Suffice it to say, I wish I'd either a) got the paper version, or b) waited until I saw this book in the library. Actually, c) both. That being said...this was a thought provoking book. With only about 160 pages of actual text, it was a fairly quick read. While apparently well researched (again, problems with the Nook, I had a hard time connecting Orenstein's notes and bibliography to the actual text itself) it was written in a popular enough style to be easily accessible and understood. This is a book for a concerned parent, not, as I've discovered, an English major with an interest in childhood development. I wish there was more talk about boys and boy culture in this book--though, I do understand that Orenstien is writing from the position as an expert on raising girls, and as the mother of a daughter. And while the points she brings up about girls are thought provoking and at times terrifying, the information mentioned almost in passing about boys is equally so.
1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 22, 2013
Flowermoon
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Posted December 19, 2012
This a noce book but waste of time
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Posted October 22, 2012
I totally agree with u. This section is 4 commenting not 4 noobs with retarted warriors names
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 26, 2012
Will all the losers with stupid names please stop wasting our time
0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 26, 2012
Can i join i need a mo
0 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 19, 2012
Hi hey was good so do got go dot did
0 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 16, 2012
Thank you! Walks away quickly then runs into a forest.
0 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 16, 2012
Well then. Do you want to be mates.
0 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 16, 2012
Your not my mom are you?
0 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 15, 2012
Wolffang nodded. Sure, I'd love to join.
0 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 15, 2012
Goldkit~ Moonstar?
0 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 15, 2012
"Hello" blacksoul says politely to the leader
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Overview
Sweet and sassy 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 the ...