Is too much exposure to Disney princesses bad for a lttle girl?

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Trivial compared to some of the other threads in this topic, I know, but need to know if I should just indulge 4 yo DD1's princess phase or if I'm setting her up for a lifetime of waiting for her 'true love' to arrive on a white charger and whisk her off to 'happily ever after' (yeah, right).
Going to bed now but am genuinely interested in your replies!

Aliens dont often land and make friends with small boys but its fantasy, a story for children, just like princess stories...

...what is wrong with you all????

If you put it in those terms I think perhaps I would like to try to teach my daughter that there are many different, valid routes to happiness and self-fulfilment. The DP route only seems to involve the love of a Handsome Prince (couldn't bring myself to go all the way through the Disney Little Mermaid story, but does she die in the end as the HP marries another?)

If it is just a marketing thing and you are too snobbish to allow you daughter to enjoy dressing up in princess gear you deem cheap and nasty then why not just say so?

Why try and dress it up as something high-brow and life-affirming?

As if a child who enjoys princess stuff will inevitably grow up to be a simpering doormat for some burly bloke because of it.

Anchovy, I think no she guess what hang onto your hats marries the handsome prince, whaddya know?

IME a handsome prince is usually on the lookout for another handsome prince, anyway.

What is wrong with me? Nothing - I just don't particularly like exposing my daughter to saturation coverage of sub-standard role models without some counterbalance (which in my case tends to involve me laughing and shouting "That's pants - she should just get a job" from time to time).

Happy for anyone who doesn't think it matters to do whatever they want with their own DDs.

bet it is a laugh a minute in your house at story time

I think Disney princesses succeed in marrying not dying even when the originals in the stories die. Doesn't Barbie-the-swan marry the prince in Barbie Swan lake, while in the original Swan lake she dies? I haven't seen it but so DP (i.e. my partner, not my disney princess) informs me.

I think that when little girls are 3/4/5 projecting themselves into a happy marriage and children (the princess meets her handsome prince route) is OK and doesn't necessarily need to be over-complicated - I don't think that she should be getting her prince only because of her physical attractions, though. But proper fairy tales have princesses or other female heroines with other qualities, like hard work and kindness and modesty.

Growing up it is of course vital that girls and boys understand that there are many and varied routes to self-fulfilment.

Interestingly, one of the conversations I have frequently with my partner is about male role-models. He (and all the French men of his generation I know) was very much brought up with the idea that a career was the only route to self-fulfilment, with the result that many things in life passed him by - until his mid-life crisis

Eh? No, binklebells, since you so very kindly ask no it isn't because I'm a snob.

Then I feel sorry for your dd Anchovy, who cant simply be allowed to enjoy in that uncomplicated unjudgemental way that children do without withering putdowns being thrown in by her mum tbh.

This thread is ridiculous so as Duncan Bannatyne et al would say - I'm out

LOL re "too snobbish to allow you daughter to enjoy dressing up in princess gear you deem cheap and nasty then why not just say so?"

Snobbish isn't the word I'd choose - but they do look like there are health and safety implications with some of DS's dressing up dresses. DH worries if she runs to fast it will rub together and she will combust!

However, for the record, even if they were made out of pigment dyed organic cotton I think I still would not be thrilled!

Anchovy, didn't you have a story with a prince called Brian in it?

Anchovy - how about a princess dress lovingly made by a grandmother for her granddaughter's 3rd birthday in a delightful pink cotton sprigged with white flowers?

There really isn't any need to feel sorry for my DD.

Hmm, I think as a parent it is our duty to offer some judgment/guidance. I'm not sure shouting "That's pants" amounts to a withering put down, LOL

I used to wonder the same thing about my little sister, who was about 3 at the time and would watch cinderella constantly. She knew all the songs and loved all the characters, even the mice and the birds. I remember thinking how entranced she was by the whole thing and worried that this disney fantasy of what life is like could set her up for disappointment. She's still only 12 so it's too early to say waht lasting effects, if any it might have had.

I quite agree that as parents we should offer guidance and show judgement.

But... I think you can relax just a little.

Crikey, I thought I was the toy/book police. Now I have encountered more ferocious than me

Ah yes, Prince Brian. He complimented the princess on the way she had decorated the castle (barf!)

I'm still laughing at this.

I don't like Disney Princesses - either the passive ethos, the lack of depth in the stories (weaker than the underlying fairy tales, I always think) or the pervasive merchandising. So I prefer not to buy them for my daughter. I don't go as far as chucking them out and for the record she has (off the top of my head) a DP stencil book, mug, umbrella and a couple of story books, together with some of the ubiquitous dressing up costumes all of which she has been given. If I have to choose - or indeed buy - a book then I try to go for something I like as well - or that is better written (Hairy McLary, Richard Scarry, Julia Donaldson etc).

I'm slightly bemused as to why this makes me judgmental, makes me need to relax or makes my daughter hard done by!

LOL AT "SHE SHOULD GET A JOB!" Have you got Princess Smarty Pants? They still live happliy ever after IIRC, but I think its great.

The hand made princess dress sounds sweet - its not all princesses per say that I have a problem with.

If trying to keep dd's life from being crowded with unhelpful influences makes me a snob, then its a label I will wear with pride.

Anchovy, our DD's will no doubt join a @I had a deprived childhood' self help group in years to come.

For the record, My Mum did not let me have a Barbie when I was a little girl, and I think she did the right thing and do not feel deprived!

I have two sons but I have to say I regularly feel sickened by the cloying floral pinkness of princess merchandise for girls. What sort of generation of women is expected to come out of this sort of bizarre cultural backtracking? I just don't recall it being like that when my sister and I grew up in the 70s.

The messages to boys are equally bad in some ways (violence, domination, etc etc) but as a poster down the thread has already said, it focuses much more on positive things such as activity, movement, achievement, learning about the universe.

I think a lot of little girls grow up disappointed in men and the world (god knows I did) and princess myths don't help. For anyone who thinks they don't affect adult women, watch Pretty Woman (if you can bear it).

Anchovy - you come across as a bit too PC anti-girl toy, that's all.

I suppose it goes with the ruthless career woman persona .

It's the colonising Disney does - what you could if you were so minded put under the Rant Heading of cultural imperialism - that I think is so insidious.

Don't mind princesses, so long as bit of balance (Dido Twite was my alter ego) in there too. Don't mind fantasies of not having to take responsibility for your own life (we all have them) so long as you can snap out of it & do your own teeth when you have to. Don't mind pink, so long as I don't have to wear it; don't mind flouncing dressings-up.

But I really really do mind that Beauty of Beauty & the Beast is now "Belle", and only Belle, in millions of little minds. And the same with all sorts of other existing (esp traditional) content that's been devoured by Disney & spewed up in its hideous conformity.

It's like what happened to Tigger & Pooh - does any child now see the original drawings, or the Disney travesties?

Yuk, I say. Back to Grimm brothers, Arthur Rackham, scary scary Andrew Lang even. And Bettelheim too.

Ooh yes, the Wolves of Willoughby Chase. I loved those stories

Also- beauty is the main focus of all the princess legends isn't it- and that sucks a big one.

I have really noticed that all the little girls my son plays with are massively more aware of looks and clothes than he is (He just isn't, basically- and that isn't biological. No one (except me) cares about his appearance or focuses on it, because he's a boy).

I am a firm believer in corporate exploitation of cultural insecurities. There is ever increasing confusion as to the 'position' of women in this culture- most of them have to work, of course, so the whole domestic adornment thing has become a symbol of high economic status rather than drudgery. It's easy to sell dreams and fantasies of purchasable beauty, so the Disney princess of today can become the Jordan of tomorrow. (And Jordan of course named her daughter Princess, god bless her.)