Cinderelle Ate My Daughter & Girls on the Edge

While surfing through Goodreads (a book review website), I came upon a book titled "Cinderella Ate My Daughter." Naturally I was intrigued and stopped at the library on my way home to pick it up. I ended up going home with another book on the same shelf called "Girls On The Edge".


I read both books and naturally am finding myself looking at our world a little differently. I have this love/hate relationship with books about social change because I absolutely love learning the lesser known truths about certain topics, but I hate how irritated I get  afterwards.


One minute I'm proud that in my prime childhood days I knew every word Ariel sang in the Little Mermaid and enjoyed dancing around my kitchen table like the teacups in Beauty and the Beast. "Be our guest, be our guest...." Then I read these books and I'm ashamed of Disney and sickened by the term "princess". I feel the same after I watch documentaries. 


However, after the rage subsides, I am grateful for the new knowledge and insight gained from people who are so passionate about educating others. Having a passion myself for helping people, especially children and youth, I felt that these would be good reads for me. 


Both books were narratives about the culture and education of girls in our modern society, with a background on the culture of girls historically. "Cinderella Ate My Daughter" was a more entertaining look into the effect of our princess girlie-girl culture including commercial marketing, the overuse of the color pink and the diminishing creativity in our culture from both. 


But "Girls on the Edge" was my favorite because the author provided a more educated and rounded view of what girls today face. He focuses on four areas which are sexual identity, the cyberbubble, obsessions and environmental toxins. 


Here are a few nuggets from each:

Cinderella Ate My Daughter 

• The author, Peggy Orenstein, asserts that though girls and women can do so much more now than ever before, our culture has created more barriers for girls' freedom than ever before. 

"We can excel in school, play sports, go to college, aspire to-and 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, decorating, perfectly calibrated child-rearing, about pleasing men and being envied by other women."

• Orenstein worries about all the cultural messages girls are getting -- especially from the marketing mad men behind such things as Disney Princess merchandise: 

• Princesses tend to be isolated, not encourage female bonding. In fact she points out that Disney themselves when creating the Princess marketing in 2000, were worried since they "had never marketed its characters separately from a film's release, and old timers considered it a heresy to lump together those from different stories. That is why, when the princesses appear on the same item, they never make eye contact." They look in different directions as if unaware of the other's presence.

• Their main goals in their lives are to be saved by a prince, get married and be taken care of for the rest of their lives. 

Orenstein wants girls to realize they don't have to rely on heroes. They can be their own heroes. 

•  Their value derives largely from their appearance.  She worries that the more mainstream media girls consume, the more importance they place on being pretty and sexy.  

• The Disney Princess line, along with Barbie, American Girl, and most other popular girl toys encourage "rabid materialism". 

• The overemphasis on everything pink and princess stifles girls creativity and imagination.

• Orenstein, asserts that part of the unspoken promise of the Disney Princess brand is that it will keep our daughters safe. It is supposedly a safe place devoid of sexuality and threat. Eventually, this world leads to Disney's Hannah Montana and the Wizards of Waverly Place, and the real-life "princesses" take the place of cartoons. But then these actresses grow up, and suddenly Miley Cyrus appears almost naked on the cover of Vanity Fair. Of course this is deeply confusing to the girls who loved her as Hannah Montana. The natural maturation of the teenage girls whose pre-sexual identities are fused with beloved, role-model characters renders even more complicated the already-rough terrain of adolescence. "The virgin/whore cycle of pop princesses, like so much of the girlie-girl culture pushes in the opposite direction, encouraging girls to view self-objectification as a feminine rite of passage."

My feelings: Overall, I was intrigued by the author's investigation into understanding and analyzing the things that her little girl might encounter and interact with. I agreed with much of what she was saying but sometimes I feel like she was taking things a little too far. Although the Disney Princess marketing was not around during my childhood - I loved playing princess, Barbies, wearing pink, and shopping - and I turned out just fine. Overall, as you read you learn to look at innocent things with a sharper eye and you gain a deeper insight to step in and prepare your daughters, friends, or other young girls to navigate for what they might encounter.

Girls on the Edge 

Psychologist and family physician Leonard Sax asserts that many girls growing up in the 21st century lack a stable, internally developed sense of self.  External validation is everything. Today's girls, Sax claims, often "find themselves not so much living as performing." And when, for whatever reason, that performance stops eliciting external approval or comments on Facebook walls, girls implode.

Here is a great summary of the written found at the following website: http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=12461&pageid=23&pagename=Arts):

• After 15 years in family practice, Author Leonard Sax saw firsthand that the girls are hardworking and achieving but increasingly, girls he dealt with in his practice were fixated on some ideal -- to be the top student, the top athlete, the girl who’s really thin -- to the point where failure could bring on a major crisis, if not psychological collapse. 

• Beyond his office, observation, research and lots of contact with girls’ schools showed that an increasing proportion of girls were locked in a cyberbubble. When not honing their image on Facebook they were texting non-stop, keeping the cellphone under their pillow at night and under the desk at school, so that they could receive messages 24/7, and picking up a double-shot espresso coffee on their way to school to stay awake.

• More fundamental, and in a way driving other trends, was the wholesale sexualisation of girls that has been increasing in momentum over the past 50 years, causing an identity crisis. With even pre-pubescent girls dressing as though they had a sexual agenda, in their hot pants and midriff-baring tops, sexual confusion reigned.

• Something else, not so obvious, was bothering the doctor: environmental toxins (leaching out of plastic food packaging, for example) that contribute to the early onset of puberty, depriving girls of part of their childhood and exposing them to higher risks of depression, eating disorders and delinquency, not to mention cardiovascular problems and breast cancer in the long run.

Here are some key points I found:

• Girls are beginning to start puberty at too early of an age where their brains are not emotionally or mentally ready for the change. "Most 11-year-old girls who look 15 are not ready to handle the attention they may attract when they go to the mall or the beach. It's often confusing and embarrassing  to them. It may even be frightening."

• They also lose their middle childhood when girls previously were able to figure out who they were and who they wanted to be - to develop a sense of self without regard to their sexuality or being overly concerned about whether their skirt was too "hot" or not hot enough.

• Suggested tips to prevent your daughter from going through puberty too early:
• Avoid exposing her to the environmental toxins (avoid plastic bottles, heating any food in plastic containers, and paying attention to lotion and creams she uses)
• Engage her in appropriate exercise programs
• Encourage her Dad to be a warm and loving Father - the presence of a girl's biological father appears to have a protective effect, delaying the onset of puberty in the father's daughter.
• If you're a Dad, be there for your daughter.
• More about environmental toxins (stay away from BPA and phthalates): 

• Avoid canned foods. Eat fresh or frozen foods instead.
• Pour water directly from the faucet into the glass, not into a water bottle.
• If you want to drink soda, buy it in glass bottles. Don't buy any beverage in a plastic bottle.
• Don't microwave food in plastic containers or heat food in any plastic container in the oven.
• Don't put plastic containers in the dishwasher.
• Don't drink hot beverages in any plastic cup - use ceramic, glass, porcelain or steel.
• Avoid any container with the number 7 in the recycle triangle.
• Avoid using plastic wrap altogether.

• If your daughter has already started puberty (age 6 or 8 and developing breasts), new medications are possible to slow down or stop it until a later time. The process is not complete until she has begun menstruating regularly.

My feelings: Overall I felt that Dr. Sax did a much better job of presenting his case using facts and scientific studies to back up his own theories. I was amazed by all of the many factors that parents - and those around young girls - have to think about when trying to lead these girls in the right direction. I would highly recommend reading this book over the Cinderella book. He also a book called "Boys Adrift" that I'll have to read now.