The Princess Problem

Cinderella Ate Her Daughter

By Janine Defao

Author Peggy Orenstein's Foray Into Girlie-Girl Culture

You know the old saw about being a better parent before you had children? Berkeley, California author Peggy Orenstein can do you one better. She was an expert on girls before she gave birth to one.

Orenstein, a contributing writer to the New York Times magazine, had spent decades researching and writing about girls, women and culture, with bestselling titles including Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap and Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids and Life in a Half-Changed World.

She knew all about girls struggling with body image and self worth, and about women fighting against outdated concepts of gender roles. Accordingly, she kept the decidedly anti-feminist princess tales (look prett y and get rescued by a man) away from her daughter. So, imagine her surprise when she found Daisy, at age 3, lying on the fl oor in the middle of a crowd of kids, arms folded across her chest, pretending to be Snow White and waiting for her prince’s kiss to revive her.

“If princesses had infiltrated our little retrohippie hamlet (of Berkeley, CA), imagine what was going on in places where women actually shave their legs?” muses Orenstein in her new book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture (Harper Collins). The book chronicles the inescapable resurgence of prett y and pink – and its emphasis on how girls look – examines media from fairytales to Facebook, and cautions that “the choices we make for our toddlers can infl uence how they navigate (our culture) as teens.”

Orenstein, 49, spoke with Parenthood.com partner Bay Area Parent about the book and her continuing struggle to help her daughter, now 7, chart a course through popular culture.