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Playing Princess by Wenda Reed

My daughter was 3. She saw a pink, multi-ruffled “Cinderella” dress on the rack, and I was in the mood to buy it for her. She put it on and swirled around and around, hugging me and saying, “I wanted this dress my whole life.”

After a ballerina and tutu phase at age 4, my daughter mostly dropped out of the princess stage and to my knowledge has never again worn anything light pink or ruffled. But although she spent far more time mucking out horse stalls than messing with her hair or makeup, and spent 98 percent of her adolescence in blue jeans, she still turned into a princess at high school dances and, of course, the senior prom.

Some girls stay in the phase a little longer. Every Sunday, three or four girls in our kindergarten Sunday school class show up in incredibly elaborate dresses. This last week, we asked them their favorite play activity, and several of them said, “Playing dress-up princess.”

They’re not alone, if sales of the eight-year-old Disney Princess franchise are any indication. Sales of Disney Princess items have risen from $300 million in 2001 to $3 billion in 2006, and today there are more than 25,000 products based on the franchise. The plethora of companies offering princess, little-girl spa and dress-up birthday parties is another indicator. Club Libby Lu stores, including the local outlets in Bellevue Square and Alderwood Mall, sell the entire princess experience to girls ages 4 to 12.

Some feminists may cringe at this, but really, is it any different from busy women taking time for a spa treatment, pedicure and manicure or dressing to the nines for a special party or cultural event? Don’t we all like to ‘play princess’ once in a while?

As parents, I think there are two aspects of the princess persona we’d like to avoid.

The first is the idea of the princess as someone who is a victim or helpless beauty who must be rescued by a man. Disney, the source of the most persistent princess images, has come a long way in this respect. Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty was completely inert until kissed by Prince Charming, and Cinderella had to be rescued by a fairy godmother. But Princess Jasmine gives as good as she gets in Aladdin while Mulan is a warrior in the movie by the same name.

I think our girls can be both feminine and strong. We can show them that there are times to dress up and pamper ourselves and escape from the daily drudgery, and times to play sports and work hard and be smart. The message we want to avoid is that they are only worthwhile if they are beautiful and that working on their body image is more important than physical health and strength, academic achievement or spiritual dimensions.

The second is the idea that our daughter is a princess and so entitled to have the world revolve around her. We have friends who raised their daughter this way, giving her the best of everything in clothes and toys so that she knows the value of nothing. The family’s schedule revolved around her wants and her dawdling, so that the parents missed many events or arrived late because the daughter was not ready or hadn’t had her wants met.

As a young adult, she still struggles with the cruel worlds of work and school, which do not recognize her exalted position, and she is still overly concerned about her own comfort and appearance to the exclusion of other people’s needs. She has many good and sweet qualities, but she unfortunately views the world from a kind of throne.

If we avoid those pitfalls, I say let our girls — and ourselves — have our times of playing princess.

Wenda Reed is a Bothell writer, very occasional princess and regular contributor to Seattle Woman.

©2008 Caliope Publishing Company