Princesses, Barbies, Alice and Jerry, Dick and Jane

Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein critiques the influence of princess mania on little girls.  To most of us who came of age in the 50s and 60s, the word, princess, is not complimentary. The first (of many) times a clerk at Lowe's or HEB called Elena ""Princess,"  I raised my eyebrows.  Now I'm used to it.  It has become (in the last fifteen years, according to this book) the normal way strangers address little girls.

This book reminds me of the feminist books we all read when we were rearing little girls.  I refused to buy Barbies for Day (though one of her friends' mothers gave her one, probably feeling sorry for my culturally impoverished child.)

Cinderella Ate My Daughter is  making me take a look back at the images that shaped me as child.  Every child is a white flower, her world-view colored by the water in the vase that is her world. Children are not critical of that water, it's just What Is.

In the formative years of kindergarten and first grade, these illustrations and stories were my water:

We looked over fences;

boys climbed on fences. 

Families had meals together. 

The mother cooked, the father carved (in his suit, no less!)

Dick was funny, funny; the girls were his audience. 

Girls played with dolls, boys played with airplanes.

Girls and mothers dressed up

and looked pretty.