Posts Tagged ‘Disney Princesses’

I don’ t mind the concpet of “princess” within girlhood. I mind when it is obectified and sexualized. We hosted two playdates in the last couple of days during which the little ladies turned themsevles into princesses. Princesses full of imagination and childhood sweetness? I can handle that.

Our house is Disney Princess free except for a Snow White book from when I was a kid. I’m not anti-Disney. For the most part. My shark/dolphin/puzzle/dinosaur/Dr. Seuss/art loving daughter would rather be playing outside with the dogs or reading books than playing princess. But every once in awhile she does enjoy it and since childhood should be rich in experiences, we play “princess”. She is certainly quickly learning that to be social with her little girlfriends, she has to understand “princess culture”.

We don’t have plastic kitten heels with feathers for her, we don’t have a tiara, we don’t have a princess vanity.  She does have play jewelry and barely-there play make-up, a drawer full of dressup clothes, ballet slippers and tutus. If she wants to play princess, I’m okay with that, as long as she wants to play ten other things during the week. But she won’t play Disney’s version of princess, or dress up with pre-conceived notions of how a princess should look. Or act. Or weigh.

Here’s how we do “princess” at our house:

 

This picture came about through friends of Pigtail Pals, Nic and Jenn. They have a friend who was shopping at Target and found this shirt. No sooner did I get a tweet from Nic and Jenn hollering “Has @PigtailPals seen this?”. Whenever I see that come across on twitter, I slowly take a sip of coffee and prepare for my head to explode.

Last week it was a singing, potty training pink toilet with Princesses all over it. *Boom*. Yesterday it was a mother who had dressed her infant daughter in a hot pink bikini and fish nets, and held her up to the pole of a floor lamp, suggesting the babe was a pint sized stripper. *Boom*

And today it was this t-shirt. *Boom* Head. Exploded. We all know how I feel about the Princesses, this is exactly why.  So as I thought about writing a post, it just felt very yadda yadda yadda. Instead, I asked good Pigtail Pals buddy Jenn to write a post. Because she, and her little gal V, do like the Princesses. Below, Jenn makes an excellent point.

And here’s what she has to say…….

My husband and I tend to be a fairly liberal parents. Permissive, if you will.

OK, lets just say it.

Our daughter is completely spoiled.

There’s not a lot that we veto in our house. If she shows an interest in something, there’s a good bet that soon or later it will show up in our house.

Our living room looks like Disney exploded in it.

For a long time it was everything Winnie-the-Pooh. Now that she’s three, Disney Princesses are where it’s at.

She has Disney Princess figurines, castles, coloring books, dishes, clothes, wall decals, every Disney Princess movie known to man, you name it. She even has her own Disney Princess bouncy castle. No, I’m not even kidding. Remember when I said she’s spoiled?

It would be fair to say that, as a family, we are pro-Disney. I grew up watching Disney every Sunday night with my family. It’s a warm and fuzzy place for me.

So it was with great dismay that this TwitPic came to my attention this morning via my follower @VampireSmitten after she saw @posielove post it.

Go take a look at it above. I’ll give you a second.

Got it?

Yeah… so… about that shirt. Oh, where should I start…

My first reaction was an all caps ‘OMG’, followed closely by ‘my kid would wear that over my dead body’.

I understand the makers were going for a ‘You too can be a princess!’ message. However, they missed the mark completely.

I also recognize the Disney Princess are drawn with, shall we say, rather ample bosoms. I get that, and I’m pretty OK with it. It’s been a source of many jokes between my husband and I.

I do NOT want those same ample bosoms superimposed on my three year old.

As I said in conversation with someone about this earlier, I don’t want to think about someone staring at breasts on my kid (fake / drawn / otherwise). The ‘ick’ factor is high.

But it’s not just the fake boobs I take issue with on this shirt.

Take another look at the shirt.

Look at where Cinderella’s waist falls in comparison to the waist of the shirt.

What sort of message is that sending to young girls who are wearing that?

Here’s Cinderella’s waist <-> and here’s yours <——–>.

I don’t want my daughter to ever look in a mirror and think that she should have a waist like that. Ever. Why? Because it’s not realistic. Unless you’re closely related to Barbie. But in the real world? Not going to happen.

So why even put such an thought out for consideration?

As with anything in life, there can be fine lines when you’re discussing hypersexualization of young girls. This shirt jumped over that line.

It’s one thing for little girls to dress up in princess costumes that are falling off them as the run screaming around the house. It’s another entirely to overlay a completely unrealistic picture of what a princess ‘should’ look like over my daughters body image.

When Jenn isn’t busy being a spoiled wife or taking care of her beautiful special-needs daughter, she is running her mouth on her blog, Princess Prose . Her spare time is spent designing, coding, and prettying-up other people’s blogs and websites at Designs By PrincessJenn.