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One Dad's Ill-Fated Battle


Against the Princesses
By Andy Hinds
He tried to keep Cinderella and Rapunzel away from his daughters, but the girls found
them anyway.

Disney
There's no room in my family's life for any more princesses. Despite seeming to have no
princess saturation point, my three-year-old twin girls don't need any more space in
their imaginations taken up by poofy gowns, sparkly slippers, dainty manners, and
gilded palaces. Though I tried to protect the twins from the Princess Industrial Complex,
I'm afraid that theythat wehave developed a princess problem.
Four years ago, the news that my wife and I were going to have twin girls coincided with
the moment of my most fervent dedication to the notion that gender is, for the most
part, socially constructed. Many academic types abandoned this attitude long ago, and
regular people tend to as well, especially after being around a child of one gender or
another for any length of time; but I clung to it. And sure enough, after spending most of
my waking hours during the last three years with my little girls and their friends of both

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sexes, I had to admit that I can see some basic differences you can usually count on
between even the youngest boys and girls. The degree to which those differences are
innate or socially nurtured is up for debate, but there's little doubt that popular culture
and the marketplace go to great lengths to emphasize and capitalize on them.
Before the twins were born, friends and family
inundated us with hand-me-down "girl clothes." We had
a mountain of plastic bins that took up half of the future
nursery, and most of the clothing inside them was pink
and frilly. I figured that it didn't really matter what the
girls wore when they were babies, but that, once the flow
of free clothing dried up, which should coincide with the
emergence of their sartorial self-awareness, we would
start buying them clothes in gender-neutral colors.

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When sorting the loot by size and season, however, I


made sure to put anything with princess logos or
imagery into the giveaway pile. The princess trope represented passivity, entitlement,
materialism, and submissiveness, and no daughter of mine would wear a onesie that
celebrated such loathsome values.
During the first two years of parenthood, I was able to maintain the princess blockade in
our home with very few breaches. Although my wife and I never talked about princesses
in front of the kids, they heard the word constantly, because it's the default term of
affection total strangers use when addressing them. Because the word had no
associations for the girls, however, it probably meant no more to them than "cutie pie."
Inevitably, though, Disney Princess items started appearing in the playroom. One day
when the girls were primping with purple combs emblazoned with images of Cinderella,
Belle, and Rapunzeltrifles from birthday party gift bagsthey asked me what the
glamorous figures were called.
"Um..." I sputtered, unable to think of a good euphemism for the dreaded P-word,
"...little ladies."
So princesses were called "little ladies" for several months, even after an anthology of
Disney Princess stories somehow made it into heavy bedtime rotation, and branded
plastic trinkets started spontaneously generating and multiplying in their toy collection.
When my wife, who had never been as stridently anti-princess as I had, took advantage
of an online sale of children's costumes, she succumbed to the cuteness of a sparkly
yellow Belle outfit, and a shimmering blue Cinderella dress. There were other
costumesa doctor, a pirate, and a firefighterbut the girls immediately gravitated
toward the frilly frocks.
As if the anemic spell I had placed to keep them from crossing over into Princess World
would be broken when I spoke the magic word, I still refused to call their new favorite

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playthings by their real names. We called the princess costumes "ball gowns" for as long
as the charade would last.
Sometime after my daughters' third birthday, I gave up. My resistance to princess
culture only made me look like a crank, and an impotent one at that. And frankly, my
cold, black heart melted whenever I saw my little girls in their royal finery. As long as
my objections did little to stem the tide, I figured I might as well enjoy it. Anyway, how
much more intense could their princess fixation become?
By Christmas Day of 2012, they had amassed nine princess costumes. Not only do they
now have princess dolls in all sizes, densities, and textures; they also have princess PlayDoh sets, Legos, Band-Aids, slippers, underwear, crayons, coloring books, puzzles, and
even a potty, just to name a fraction of their royal gewgaws. "Princessing" products
marketed to little girls is like doping in the world of professional cycling: you don't stand
a chance against the competition if you don't participate.
Other parents of girls assured me that it's just a phase, and that childhood princess
thrall had had no long-term effects on their daughters. My fears were placated for a
while. But when a mom of one of my girls' preschool classmates told me that her
daughter, previously ignorant of princess culture, had come home from school with a
thorough knowledge of Disney's royal lineage, which she had attributed to my twins, I
became concerned again. They were no longer just users; they had become pushers.
A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a video clip from Sesame Street in which Abby
Cadabby, the irrepressible fledgling fairy, talks to Sonia Sotomayor about the word
"career." Abby announces her aspiration to one day have "a career as a princess," after
which the Supreme Court Justice quickly convinces her that being a princess is not a
career. "A career," Sotomayor explains, "is a job that you train and prepare for, and that
you plan to do for a long time."
Sesame Street: Sonia Sotomayor and Abby - Career

0:00 / 2:19

My girls love the video, and demand that I show it to them on my phone several times
per day. I swell with pride when they recite the definition of "career," and I even suggest

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that Supreme Court Nomination Hearing might make for a fun alternative to their usual
make-believe game of Princess Party.
They have plenty of non-princess related toys and books, but there is no one theme that
has anywhere near the prominence and influence that Disney Princesses do. Regardless
of the more recent generations of empowered princesses in Disney movies, the overall
princess trope promotes traditional notions of femininity and an unhealthy focus on
physical beauty. Even the most feminist-friendly princess derives her social currency,
her political power, and her personal identity as "princess" from the make-believe
patriarchy.
Having a breadwinner mom who is a doctor, and having many little friends whose
parents don't adhere to traditional family gender roles, my kids are in less danger than
most of growing up to believe that their road to success depends on being pretty and
snaring a Prince Charming. But since the princess floodgates opened, they have become
far more concerned with their appearances. Though they always end up having a blast
when we go riding on scooters and bikes, I often have to coerce and bribe them in order
to pry them away from their Princess Parties.
Yesterday morning, when I dropped the girls off at preschool, one of them, who used to
say she was going to be a cowgirl when she grew up, repeated her latest dream, apropos
of nothing: "I'm going to be a princess when I grow up."
"But don't you remember what Abby and the nice lady said? Is being a princess a real
career?" That's what I always say when she mentions her new life goal.
"No," she said. "But I don't want to have a real career." Then she skipped off.
Tonight a new princess series premieres on the Disney Channel, Sofia the First. My girls
won't be watching it. We don't need any more princesses right now.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/one-dads-ill-fated-battle-againstthe-princesses/267000/
Copyright 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

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