The Little Princess Syndrome:
When Our Daughters Act Out Fairytales
By Matthew Johnson
It’s a question that most parents of young daughters face today: “Has she hit the ‘princess phase’ yet?” Not all parents are upset by this.: Many happily buy their girls princess costumes, toys, and accessories ranging from shoes to purses, all in pink. Some, though, despair of the powerful gender stereotyping this delivers to young girls and each new piece of princess gear can be a source of conflict.
The source of much of this princess culture is Disney, and in 2009 the studio extended its reach by introducing its first African-American princess, Tiana, in the animated film The Princess and the Frog. Princesses are big business for Disney. Since 2000, when the company began to tie together all the merchandising for any of its characters who might conceivably be called “princesses,” the line has become one of the company’s biggest earners. Disney’s Andy Mooney, who spearheaded the creation of the princess line, told The New York Times that he got the idea from seeing girls at Disney on Ice shows who were dressed in non-Disney princess costumes, and in the years since the company has pushed the line into almost every imaginable aspect of a child’s life, from bedding to Band-Aids to lip balm.
Not surprisingly, the marketing of Princess Tiana began well in advance of the movie’s December premiere: more than forty-five thousand dolls based on the character had already been sold by mid-November, while actors portraying her were already performing in “Tiana’s Showboat Jubilee” at Disneyland and Disney World.
The creation of Princess Tiana would seem to be an attempt to expand into the one market as yet untouched by princesses: African-American girls. The official list of Disney princesses includes, along with born princess Snow White and married-to-royalty Cinderella, two entirely non-royal characters, Mulan and Pocahontas, who are Chinese and Native respectively. The last two characters, though, rarely appear on merchandise – less, perhaps, due to their ethnic origin than the fact that neither fits well with the “princess aesthetic;” in their movies, Pocahontas appears in tolerably realistic (if somewhat revealing) Native garb, while Mulan actively rejects feminine attire in order to masquerade as a male soldier. Tiana, though, is carefully crafted to fit the princess mould, with an hourglass figure, many glamorous dresses, and even a tiara. Of course, she spends much of the movie in the shape of a frog, but that’s not the image that will adorn lunchboxes everywhere.
Is this necessarily a bad thing, though? After all, princesses – whether born to royalty at the beginning of a story or married into it by the end – have been fairytale protagonists for hundreds of years; the characters of Cinderella and Snow White long predate their Disney incarnations. The appeal of princesses is not hard to see. The unearned wealth and privilege of being a princess makes it a close parallel to classic boys’ fantasies of being demigods or orphans rocketed at birth from a distant planet. Where the male and female versions diverge is that while the boys imagine gaining powers and abilities from their special status, being a princess brings girls wealth, beauty, and romance. It’s not surprising, then, that many parents are concerned about just what gender roles their daughters are being trained to play.
One common feature of the many articles on this phenomenon is that young girls resist any criticism or alteration of their princesses. In an article in The Los Angeles Times, Rosa Brooks writes of failing to convince her daughters that princesses are more likely to end up at a guillotine than a fairytale wedding; and Tracee Sioux, who writes a blog titled The Girl Revolution, describes her unsuccessful efforts to steer her daughter away from princesses. Nor can girls be easily swayed by stories that try to subvert the classic princess: “Frogs and snails and feminist tales: Preschool children and gender,” a 1989 study by Bronwyn Davies, found that both boys and girls tend to reject stories that attempt to alter the traditional gender roles found in fairytales.
Is it really gender roles that children are so attached to, or is it the fairytale narratives on which they are experts? A recent article by Karen Wohlwend, “Damsels in Discourse: Girls Consuming and Producing Identity Texts Through Disney Princess Play,” finds that while children engaging in “media play” with princess characters feel a strong loyalty to the original narratives, they are not averse to changing things like the gender of secondary characters (turning Prince Charming into a princess, for instance) or making the protagonist more active, especially if that means giving themselves a larger and more entertaining role to play. (One of the girls in Wohlwend’s study finds a way to involve a comatose Sleeping Beauty in a swordfight.)
The children in Wohlwend’s study, though, are kindergarteners; though they might have been exposed to quite a lot of princess-related media by this age, they’re still in the early stages of forming gender identities. As girls get older, the worrying aspects of princess culture – the passivity, consumerism, and so on – may become more and more confining. As Lyn Mikel Brown, co-author of Packaging Girlhood, writes, the issue is not princess play but the sheer dominance of princess culture: “When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice; it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There’s the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you’ll see their choices are steadily narrowing.” Her co-author, Sharon Lamb, points out as well that the road traveled by princesses is a narrow one, leading to the hypersexualized roles now being sold to ‘tween and teen girls: “There’s a trap at the end of that rainbow, because the natural progression from pale, innocent pink is not to other colors. It’s to hot, sexy pink – exactly the kind of sexualization parents are trying to avoid.”
Disney is certainly aware of the gender issues underlying the “Disney Princess” line, and is walking a fine line between making movies that are girly without being too girly. After the disappointing box office performance of The Princess and the Frog, which was ascribed to the unwillingness of boys to see a movie with the word “princess” in the title, the title of the upcoming Rapunzel was changed to a more gender-neutral Tangled and the male lead made more prominent. Even if the marketing of the film is designed to appeal to boys, although, you can be sure that Rapunzel will be added to the roster of Disney Princesses and her face plastered on hundreds of licensed products (all pink, of course). The studio now has a policy of only making movies that can be spun off into brands, which means that in the long run how well the Rapunzel toothbrushes and bed sheets sell will be more important than how the movie performs.
How should parents deal with the arrival of the “princess phase”? One option is simply to say “no” – something parents should never be afraid to do. But an outright ban may backfire by making all things princess even more desirable. What may be more effective is to make sure that girls (and boys) are also exposed to more positive female role models. There are many children’s books with strong female characters; kids’ movies with good female leads can be harder to find, but the anime produced by Studio Ghibli – such as Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro – is a good place to start.
Most important is that parents engage with their children’s media and be ready to discuss the images and events they see. Don’t be confrontational, but ask questions: Do you think you can really change an angry person into a nice person, like Belle does to the Beast? Is it worth it to give up your voice and your family for a boy, the way Ariel does? If Mulan spends most of her movie dressed as a boy, why is she in girls’ clothes on the merchandising? Why do you think Disney changed the title of “Rapunzel”? There may be no escaping the “princess phase,” but teaching kids to view media critically can help make sure your princess doesn’t grow up expecting a handsome prince – or a fairy godmother – to solve all her problems.
Matthew Johnson is Director of Education for MediaSmarts.
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