In Peggy Orenstein’s article, “What’s Wrong with Cinderella?” she states that the princess story is only doing damage to young girls and women. Orenstein discusses her encounters with the princess wave and how she observes it affecting her daughter. As a mother and a feminist, Orenstein feels as if it’s her duty to rescue her daughter from becoming trapped in the princess mindset. Peggy Orenstein illustrates her claim with the endless pink, princess, and sparkles offered to her daughter. She discusses the common standards that fairytales have placed on females and how they have transferred their way into a way of life and thinking. Orenstein continues to point out the pressures Cinderella provides, but fails to acknowledge how girls now seem
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Fairytales send subliminal messages to young girls that they must look and act certain way to be worthy of a man’s attention. These tales teach girls that finding a manpage 3 is the answer to all of their problems. Orenstein uses diction such as “conventional” and “perpetual” to illustrate her point that these beliefs are all too common and never ending. She indicates that this way of thinking is not only common in princess movies, but is seen in various children movies, stores, and even in adult television shows. The popular TV show, “Sex and the City,” Orenstein claims, is a prime example of these conventional beliefs. The protagonist is fearful of “losing male love, of not having children, of being deprived of something…female”(page 4) While some may argue that fairytales don’t hold all the blame for creating these standards, they are the root of the problem. The fairy tale phase doesn’t end when girls outgrow them, they take a new form. Magazines plastered with headlines such as “50 Ways to Wow the Man of Your Dreams,” or “Shrink Your Waist in Just One Week!” are on every shelf proving that these princess standards never seem to stop. Fairytales establish what it means to be female. The obsession with Ariel, Cinderella, and Belle may fade as girls grow older, but the same morals will follow them in the new phases they grow …show more content…
When Peggy Orenstein wrote this article, things could’ve been different. At that time, princesses generally had aryan features and the stories usually ended in the girl finding love. However, now we have new princesses that stray from the classic aryan features that past princesses displayed. Movies starring girls with nationalities including African American to Hawaiian are now present in the Disney princesses. Disney has even begun creating movies where the princess is unconcerned about finding male love. For example, Disney’s Frozen is about the love of two sisters rather than the typical romance. The common beliefs that were created by fairytales are slowly, but surely being broken. Even Peggy Orenstein’s own daughter, is making strides away from the conventional beliefs about what it means to be a female. She adds after she finishes gushing about Ariel, yet another disney princess, that she wants to become a fireman when she grows up. Perhaps we haven’t fixed the entire problem of the suffocating definition of a woman, but as a generation, we have made strides into solving this
Fairytales send subliminal messages to young girls that they must look and act certain way to be worthy of a man’s attention. These tales teach girls that finding a manpage 3 is the answer to all of their problems. Orenstein uses diction such as “conventional” and “perpetual” to illustrate her point that these beliefs are all too common and never ending. She indicates that this way of thinking is not only common in princess movies, but is seen in various children movies, stores, and even in adult television shows. The popular TV show, “Sex and the City,” Orenstein claims, is a prime example of these conventional beliefs. The protagonist is fearful of “losing male love, of not having children, of being deprived of something…female”(page 4) While some may argue that fairytales don’t hold all the blame for creating these standards, they are the root of the problem. The fairy tale phase doesn’t end when girls outgrow them, they take a new form. Magazines plastered with headlines such as “50 Ways to Wow the Man of Your Dreams,” or “Shrink Your Waist in Just One Week!” are on every shelf proving that these princess standards never seem to stop. Fairytales establish what it means to be female. The obsession with Ariel, Cinderella, and Belle may fade as girls grow older, but the same morals will follow them in the new phases they grow …show more content…
When Peggy Orenstein wrote this article, things could’ve been different. At that time, princesses generally had aryan features and the stories usually ended in the girl finding love. However, now we have new princesses that stray from the classic aryan features that past princesses displayed. Movies starring girls with nationalities including African American to Hawaiian are now present in the Disney princesses. Disney has even begun creating movies where the princess is unconcerned about finding male love. For example, Disney’s Frozen is about the love of two sisters rather than the typical romance. The common beliefs that were created by fairytales are slowly, but surely being broken. Even Peggy Orenstein’s own daughter, is making strides away from the conventional beliefs about what it means to be a female. She adds after she finishes gushing about Ariel, yet another disney princess, that she wants to become a fireman when she grows up. Perhaps we haven’t fixed the entire problem of the suffocating definition of a woman, but as a generation, we have made strides into solving this