Permeation of Princess Power

I have worked in day care, mother’s day out, as a nanny and a teacher. I am pretty familiar with the under ten set, what they like and don’t like. In working with kids I get to spend a great deal of time around toys. I think toys are great, when they are done the right way.

If you walk down the aisle of any toy store you may notice something odd. Each aisle is filled to the point of ridiculousness. What may catch your attention is the fact that young children’s toys cover every inch of the color spectrum. They are bright, vibrant and full of variety. But this ends at about 18 months. At this point the toy aisles split off into a boy’s side and a girl’s side.

The boy’s side is dark; there is a lot of brown, navy and black. The toys are intense! (And that is an article that we will save for another time.) For now, I want to talk about walking into the girl’s side from the abyss of boyhood. The pink on the shelves usually oozes onto the floor and grabs at you as you walk by. You see the pink, you can hear the rustling of the dresses, you can smell the sweet scent of "body spray". There isn’t much transition and the sudden and intense pop of “party pink” overwhelms every sense.

Yes, that is a pancake skillet 
with Cinderella's face on it. 

I can get over the overabundance of only one color in the girls section. What I cannot get over is the permeation of princess power. The princess stuff is EVERYWHERE. It isn’t just the movies anymore; it is the dolls, clothes, shoes, hairbrushes, posters, bedclothes, and on and on. Everything and anything that can be marketed as a princess product is thrown at young girls.

So why does this bother me?  

I have a serious issue with what the princesses represent. A lot of people think that it is innocent and that this doesn't really hurt anyone. In my mind the issues that these movies contain is huge, and cannot be overlooked. Modesty is an issue in every single princess movie. The princess's entire life revolves around the man that they eventually walk into happily ever after with (with the exception of the movie Brave in which she does not end up with the prince). The girls throw themselves into fits of tears when they don't get their way or when life is too hard. Parents are portrayed as bumbling fools who should be petted and sent on their way or as overly controlling tyrants.

We encourage our little girls to look up to these women and to emulate them. And then we wonder why the little girls grown up believing that they are entitled to anything and everything that they want. This isn't just a secular problem. I was shocked the other day to be walking through a Christian bookstore and to see Bibles complete with plastic crowns!

Yes, you are the daughter of the King. But God is not like the kings in movies. In the movies the girls are encouraged to be vain, materialistic, and selfish. Those are not the attributes the God encourages in His girls. The princess in the movies consult no one and act in willful disobedience as long as it fits in with their plan. That is not ok. We need to be the role models that they look up to. We, as Christian women, need to remind girls what it means to be a child of God.