Powerless To Resist The Princesses

Journalist Peggy Orenstein's latest book, CINDERELLA ATE MY DAUGHTER, was prompted by her own daughter Daisy's infatuation with everything Princess, brought on almost immediately upon Daisy's beginning preschool. According to Orenstein, who is interviewed in this Sunday's Los Angeles Times, after a week of preschool, Daisy "had as if by osmosis learned all the names and gown colors of the Disney princesses, and that is all she could talk about."  By age three or four, Daisy's peers had already been reached by the Disney Princess marketing machine, which ten years ago began marketing Princesses together who'd never been marketed apart from their individual movies.

Just yesterday, Late Blooming Mom's daughter attended a play date at which one of the main activities was dressing up as, you guessed it, Disney Princesses.

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Not Just Another Disney Princess

Took the kids to see Disney's newest animated feature, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG.

Spent the first ten minutes just sitting there marveling at a Disney Princess who doesn't look like any previous Disney Princess. Granted, she's not technically a princess. But she DOES win the heart of a genuine prince, so close enough.

Now I suppose JASMINE and MULAN were big steps forward in terms of minority inclusion in the Disney Princess pantheon, Jasmine being some sort of ""1001 Nights" Middle Easterner (though ALADDIN's location was changed from Baghdad to the presumably more palatable, fictional Agrabah), and Mulan being Chinese. But somehow their ethnicity didn't stir an emotional chord with me the way the new gal, TIANA's, does.

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