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.
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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.
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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 the Media Awareness Network.
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