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Cinderella Ate My Daughter

Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-girl Culture
QueenBoadicea
Oct 06, 2015QueenBoadicea rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Given the plethora of ads, emails, television commercials, magazines, movies, etc., that are forced into our children’s faces every day and the youth-centric nature of modern 21st-century America culture, is it any wonder that today’s youth seems to be growing up disturbingly fast and that parents can’t seem to keep up or keep track of what their daughters see and hear? Ms. Orenstein tackles this problem and more in this treatise that is both parental guide and feminist tract. She doesn’t shy away from the fact that she wanted a son precisely because she knew rearing a daughter in this day and age is fraught with minefields. Her daughter is still a little girl but Ms. Orenstein is looking forward with worry—and rightly so—to the day that she becomes a teenager, when little Daisy’s attentions will shift from playing at being a princess in full-length gowns to dressing like a rock star—or a stripper. That day is looming closer than ever. She points out with unerring accuracy how advertising seems to be closing the gap between childhood and adulthood by making little girls grow up faster while urging older women to remain young looking, not just at age 60 but 40, 30 or even 20. When teenagers are encouraged to get Botox treatments—not to erase wrinkles but to prevent them (!)—something is seriously askew in our society. Ms. Orenstein doesn’t want her daughter to be a princess but she doesn’t wish to be a shrewish mother who berates her daughter with orations and hellfire speeches about the evils of emulating Disney princesses or wearing too much pink either. It’s a delicate line to be treading and if her explanations about her attempts to guide Daisy sometimes give the impression that it’s a nerve wracking and exhausting job, well, it is. But there are moments of quiet contemplation too as Ms. Orenstein shares with us all those times when Daisy asks questions about what her mother wants for her. These passages are told in a convincingly childish manner with no whiff of an adult patina overlaid on it. Daisy rejects Sleeping Beauty because all she does is sleep and yet she repeatedly wonders why her mother objects to a Cinderella doll. Does she not think Cinderella is pretty? Does mommy not like Cinderella’s gown? What’s wrong with wanting to be with a nice, handsome guy anyway (and if he’s a prince isn’t that a bonus?)? However, who doesn’t cheer when Daisy puts aside her princess gowns in favor of dressing like Wonder Woman? We finish with a sigh of relief and the fervent hope that Ms. Orenstein will guide her daughter and, perhaps, all of our daughters into being self-assured, confident, radiant, sexual and knowing human beings, ones who know what they want and won’t let anyone bully them into being something they’re not. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.