An interesting look at the shaping of young girls, the marketing being done to appeal to them. I really enjoyed it. ( )

Entertaining, thought-provoking, and it raised my awareness.

Just wish she'd offered some solutions. Kind of a depressing book in that regard.

Welp. ( )

In essence, Orenstein has written a memoir about what it is like to be someone like me: a conscientious, modern woman trying to raise a girl to be anything she wants to be, and not just a girl, not that there's anything wrong with girliness (with that last part being basically all one phrase.)
It's hard and Orenstein nails her depiction of the double whammy: first they extensively market pink, princessy, unempowered women to our girls, and then society tells us we're not allowed to complain, because if we complain we're dissing feminity, disempowering our girls and being all-around anti-feminist.

Orenstein doesn't offer much in the way of solutions, but it's nice to know that there are others out there who want to raise our girls to be able to choose to be anything that they want to be, rather than "choosing" to be anything that society presents them with. And that even the best mom has girls who go through the princess stage, but that if you talk them through it, they come through the other side and realize that they don't need to sit on their duff waiting for a prince to save them and that there is more to the world than consumerism and aesthetics. Or at least Orenstein's daughter came out the other side -- mine is still young enough that I cover her ears when people call her "princess."

The other part that really spoke to me was the idea that she explores relating achievement to appearance -- it has definitely been true for me that the more I have been academically and professionally successful, the more I am expected to perform a stereotypical female gender role. I had previously thought that was only anecdotally true for me, having transitioned from the world of computer science, where I could perform whatever gender I wanted, into the extremely gendered world of medicine. However, Orenstein presents it as a global phenomenon: "'We can excel in school, play sports, go to college...get jobs previously reserved for men, be working mothers, and so forth. But in exchange, we must obsess about our faces, weight, breast size, clothing brands..."
( )

Some interesting ideas but an article or series of articles would have been better. ( )

I had some high hopes for CINDERELLA ATE MY DAUGHTER. It had a catchy title and focused on something I have been wondering how to tackle. How am I going to protect my daughters AGAINST Cinderella?

Peggy offers a nice origin story of Disney Princesses. There are some great nuggets of information (like how pink was more of a boy color and blue the girl color earlier in the 20th century). I was expecting a vicious counter-attack on Disney. A rallying cry. It was much more of a balanced and ineffective shrug of the shoulders (or whatever is the opposite of a rallying cry).

At least I'm grateful for books like these to make us think about these things than just blindly following Disney Princess-mania. With not much guidance and it being outdated (wonder where the FROZEN movie would fit? 8th Graders don't use Facebook anymore), I guess it's up to me to defend my daughter against the girl wearing one glass slipper. ( )