Disney Princesses: Friends or Foes? When a woman gets pregnant, the first thing she wonders is what the sex of the baby will be. If the child is a boy, the mother’s life will be filled with race cars and dirt, but if the child is a girl, life will be filled with pink, ponies and princesses. The traits of young children are not a new trend; they have been exemplified for the past twenty years on television and in all homes across the world. Being the mother of a small girl, Peggy Orenstein’s life is constantly bombarded with talk of being a princess. Orenstein wrote an article in the Contemporary Reader complaining that Disney Princesses are taking over culture and sending young girls the wrong messages about her femininity. Orenstein writes, “Its 2006, not 1950. This is Berkley, California. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?”(Orenstein, Peggy 101). I feel that Orenstein is wrong and selfish for not letting her daughter enjoy the princesses like every other little girl. Disney princesses are innocent and will do no harm in the long run. Through out this essay, I’ll show a positive side to the negatively perceived Disney princess. In an interview with Pamela Paul from Parents.com, Orenstein said this about her child, “My daughter went to preschool, and suddenly life was 24/7 princess. Before that, play had been about blocks and trains and other things, but that came to a screeching halt.” (Paul). I do not understand why this parent is so against her daughter coming home from preschool and loving princesses. Preschool is a scary time for all children. Any common ground a child can find with the other kids will help them to enjoy school and help them to gain friendships. Most little girls these days are crazy about princesses and I don’t see the problem in that. If the common ground for them is the idea that everyone is a princess then let it be. Leah Nadeau, a blogger wrote this, “As much as I longed to be a princess, like any little girl watching a Disney movie, I think that I, like other children, was relatively able to cognitively comprehend the differences between real and make believe at a young age.”(Nadeau). I believe that she is exactly right. I have memories from when I was seven years old playing princesses with my friends and pretending the back yard was our kingdom. That was how we occupied our free time. I knew once playtime was over that I was no longer a princess, but for the moment; it made me feel royal and beautiful. There was no harm in believing that I was a princess because every little girl around me was one too so we all got along and became friends. Orenstein also feels that Disney princesses give young girls the wrong idea about how successful the rest of her life is going to be. Crazily, she’s not the only one who feels this way. When talking about Disney movies and princesses, a reader from the website Sociology and Family posted this “These can give young girls wrong ideas about love and relationships. It can have impacts on their self esteem because they begin to expect “A Fairytale” which can be unrealistic.”(Thompson). Coming from a broken home of divorce, the Disney princesses were my way of escaping and believing that there was more out there for me. I still have those hopes today. Yes, I may have dropped the princesses, but the ideas from them are still engraved in my head twelve years later. If parents don’t allow their children to believe in something better than what they are at the moment, no child is ever going to dream. If dreaming stops in children so do entrepreneurs, celebrities and scientists who all believed in things bigger than what they were when they were growing up. There would also be no source of positivity for children that are stuck in unfortunate situations. They would be forever depressed and not know how to look for a brighter future. Some could say that dreaming is naïve, but who has the right to take the innocence from a child? Little girls thinking they are princesses is outrageous, yes, but isn’t that what being a child is all about? To me, being a child is supposed to entail no responsibility, complete innocence to the world around them and dreaming of being everything in the world such as fire fighters, doctors, astronauts and of course, princesses. To not let a child believe in one of these things could alter the way a child thinks about growing up and becoming other extraordinary things. Orenstein needs to understand that something as simple as pretending to be a princess will not do harm in the long run. Most children will grow out of that phase by the time they are eleven and start to look to their parents and the people around them for ideas of how to act when they grow up. I noticed a few things in Orenstein’s essay that were not relevant to her daughter being affected by the Disney Princesses. The item that stuck out to me the most about Orenstein’s essay in the Contemporary Reader was that she focused more on the money aspect of princesses rather than the way it affected her daughter. Who cares if Disney makes billions of dollars off of Disney princesses? Isn’t that the point of marketing? To find things people like and sell them? People cannot get mad that Disney is doing something right. I feel that the money aspect of the princess craze has nothing to do with how it is negatively effecting the little girls of today. Any toy you purchase these days is going to be expensive. If you’re going to spend the money buying your daughter something nice, I would choose to spend it on a princess that will give her hopes for her future. The princesses are a market that supports young women being confident in her own skin; I don’t see the problem in that. Most young boys are obsessed with action figures and you don’t see parents complaining about how their muscles are not a realistic body image for their sons. I also noticed how vocal Orenstein was with her daughter letting her know that she did not approve of the Disney princesses. I disagree with this aspect of her parenting. I feel that most little girls should make their own choices in clothing, friends and even toys to start to build who they are as people. If someone were to constantly dictate my life growing up I don’t think I would be the same person I am today. My mother always let me choose my own clothing, minus church days and funerals, and she let me choose what toy I thought was fun to play with. I act the way I do now because of the influence my mother had on me growing up. Disney movies are not the way children are going to learn to act. In an article written on Preschool NSW, it states that “families are the most important and immediate influence in children’s lives. (Community Child Care Co-operative Ltd.). This shows that a little girl will not base her life on a movie; or fictional princess. The girl will base it on experience with the family and community that surround her. Children are innocent beings and something as simple as calling themselves princesses or princes is not going to corrupt their way of thinking as they get older. Overall, I feel that Orenstein is completely wrong in her thinking that Disney princesses are negative influences on young girls. Being a child is a scary time in life and if wanting to be a princess is the worst thing my future daughter does I will be nothing but happy. Disney princesses are a growing market and I think that despite Orenstein’s essay, they’ll continue to have a place in every little girl’s heart.

Works Cited
Community Child Care Co-operative Ltd. “Families are the biggest influence on children.” Preschools NSW. Community Child Care Co-operative Ltd, 2008. Web. 14 Nov. 2011. .
Nadeau, Leah. “Disney Princesses: Oppressive or Imaginative?” The Lilith Effect. Word Press, 15 Feb. 2011. Web. 14 Nov. 2011. .
Orenstein, Peggy. The Contemporary Reader. New York: Pearson Education, 2008. Print.
Paul, Pamela. “The Power of the Princess: An Interview with Peggy Orenstein.” Parents. Meredith Corporation., 2011. Web. 10 Nov. 2011. .
Thompson, Beverly. “Mickey Mouse Monopoly.” Sociology of the Family. Word Press, 2011. Web. 10 Nov. 2011. .