Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture [Hardcover]

First of all, I'm a new father. Of a girl. Naturally I find myself wondering how on earth I am going to raise a confident, considerate and well adjusted girl in these complicated times. I also noticed that sometimes people's eyebrows would raise as they saw me reading this book in public. Trust me. This book is a worthwhile read for mothers AND fathers.

What this book has proven to be is an alarming expose of the numerous pitfalls our culture has created for girls. Orenstein humorously and cuttingly tackles issues such as the marketing schemes of the "disney princess brand", "pink explosion" of products marketed toward girls, the pattern of teen-icon role-models who go from "wholesome" to "whoresome" as they mature (even the seemingly incorruptible Miley Cyrus succumbed to it as she got older). AKA don't pose for Vanity Fair. The book is well researched and makes a compelling case for all parents to be concerned about the future of their daughters.

Orenstein's agenda is liberally slanted with an anti-consumer agenda, and you can tell because there's some obvious HRC/Palin comparisons in the book, but what would you expect from a lady living in Berekely, California? A Santa Cruz resident, myself, I didn't find these insertions bothersome, but to the politically conservative I advice a grain of salt.

At times the narrative seemed to get overly alarmist, raising red flags about things which I personally wouldn't worry very much. I understand why, but parts of the discussion seemed to over-stress the dangers to our nascent daughters. I just don't buy it. Meanwhile, the book offers a great amount of commentary/critique about these challenges, but provides very little of substance in terms of how to address these issues on the parental end. There are some gems scattered throughout but I found myself wishing there was more guidance for those who are struggling here. Maybe the answer is that there is no real answer, because the parenting experience is so different for everyone.

Is it just me or are nonfiction books of this type getting shorter and ending in an increasingly abrupt manner? I was startled when I hit the end of this most recent offering from Ms. Orenstein; with a good pinch of pages left I thought I had just reached the end of a chapter, only to see the rest of the bulk consisted merely of acknowledgements, notes, and so forth.

This sudden drop off only adds to my list of frustrations with this interesting, well-intentioned, yet flawed book. As the mother of three young daughters, I was at once intrigued and skeptical when I picked up the book, which claims to tell us poor befuddled mothers what to make of the supposedly new culture of "girlie girl." The author immediately strikes a very bloggy, up-to-the-minute tone, which can be fun to read but also frustratingly limited. It is odd to pick up an actual physical book and see snarky snappiness and reference after reference to things I have seen online, but have never encountered in real life. Is there truly no world outside the internet now?

It also has the downfall so common to these social critique tomes, in that the author employs what I like to call the "me and my playgroup" method of research. Rather than delving into true social scientific research even in a casual way, rather than expanding her explorations into unfamiliar neighborhoods or more solidly limiting the terms of the inquiry to well-heeled coastal progressive communities, the author lazily lopes around the park on the corner and runs back to report what she has seen there. A lot of assumptions fill in the gap. For instance, she says that since the "princess thing" is so big "even" where she lives (liberal Berkeley) it "must" be even worse elsewhere. Well no, not necessarily. And as far as any kind of material spoiling and expectations of things like "spa day," well, if you can't even afford a once-a-year "spa day" for yourself (as the millions of Americans who make less than $40,000 per year mostly cannot) then you certainly aren't going to be getting one for your 7 year old, whether you think it's immoral or not!

Orenstein gallops along at quite a clip with the false dichotomies, too. Should we encourage girls to play act being a doctor, or just let them be ballerinas? Uh, why not both? Am I damaging my daughter by letting her play with Thomas the Train toys or is it more damaging to let her play princess? Well, why should either one be damaging at all, and especially if one has the breadth of mind to enjoy both?

In Orenstein's anecdotal evidence about the excesses of "girlie girl" I did notice one common theme that carried through: she wasn't there when it happened. In one instance, her daughter had wandered off with some older kids. In most of the rest, it concerned something that happened at preschool. Over and over again with the stuff she cites I found myself thinking, "WHERE are the parents of all these kids?" So much could be remedied by parents being there and saying no as frequently as possible. Dare I say, this woman is making an excellent argument in favor of strong women staying at home to rear and shelter their daughters? Oh heavens, that cannot be! But at least if she proposed this she would be proposing SOME solution. As the book slumped forward, prematurely expired, I had already been feeling depressed and hopeless about the state of girlhood. Orenstein leaves us there with no ideas for remedy at all, save a bland last-minute exhortation that maybe moms can sorta make a difference, I guess, if we try. Woo!

Cinderella Ate My Daughter / 978-0-061-71152-7

For people interested in gender politics and how they play out in advertising aimed at young girls in America, this book is an absolute delight to read. Author Orenstein examines everything from Disney Princess merchandise, American Girls dolls, the "Twilight" phenomena, Miley Cyrus (and all the "innocent-but-sexy" singers and actresses that have come before her, and will come after her yet), pageant culture, and Facebook - all through the dual lens of her own experiences as a mother and her own research as a journalist.

"Cinderella Ate My Daughter" is wonderfully written - both informative and interesting. The author has a wonderful sense of when to intersperse daily anecdotes from her own life into the meticulous studies she references and the experts she quotes. This is anything but a "fluff" book - there's so much information compiled here and it's presented in an imminently easy-to-digest format. Looking back on this book, dozens of fascinating facts leap to my mind - such as the evidence that dolls were in low vogue among girls in the late 1800's, until President Roosevelt warned the country against declining Anglo-Saxon birth rates and suddenly the race was on to prepare (certain kinds of) girls to be 'good American mothers'. Then there's the chapter about mixed-gender play and how to understand the difference between boys and girls playing WITH each other and them playing NEAR each other (and how to encourage the latter to blossom into the former). Especially impressive in this book is how the author always tries to give the opposition a fair say, even while making it clear where she falls on the spectrum - everything comes across as highly informative and extremely fair-spoken.

One thing I particularly liked about this book is how fallible-as-a-mother Orenstein is willing to be, and how kind and fair-minded she is towards the other parents in the book. She seems to really understand how difficult it is to meld high-minded principles with day-to-day parenting (for instance, in explaining WHY a Bratz doll is "inappropriate" to her 5-year-old, she's frustrated that the very CONCEPT of the inappropriateness of a "sexy" doll isn't something she wanted to get into just yet!), and I really respect that there is pretty much zero "parent bashing" here. When the author explores the "American Girls" dolls (a marketing line that she readily admits is out of the budgets of most parents and thus constitutes a minority of American girls being able to even afford the dolls), it would be easy to decry all the money "wastefully" spent on the extravagant doll clothes, but she doesn't. Even the pageant chapter is tactfully and thoughtfully written - Orenstein seems fully aware that "parent bashing" only helps to blind us to the other forms of marketing and expression that are targeted to our girls (i.e., "Sure my daughter wears a Cinderella bridal veil to kindergarten every day, but at least I don't let her dress like JonBenet!"), and so instead she uses the pageant concept to draw parallels, not to cast judgment.

I also want to note that this book struck me as very HAES-friendly and extremely insightful on how to encourage healthy body-image in young daughters - several of the experts that Orenstein quotes hit the nail on the head, I think, on the best hows-and-whens to tell your daughter that she's beautiful, and how to link that "beauty" to inner character rather than outer trappings.

For people who are interested in gender studies and girl-aimed marketing, I feel like this is a wonderful book to read. The book is easy to digest, and hard to put down - I read the whole book in two days, largely because I just didn't want to stop. Most of all, I appreciate that the author understands that the issues of gender politics and how they affect our young daughters are *complicated*, and while she tries to offer her own solutions at the end, she never sounds preachy, know-it-all, or "my way is the right way" - I think, largely because she gets that a complicated issue like this doesn't have one, pithy solution that can be easily summed up on a bumper sticker.

NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through Amazon Vine.

~ Ana Mardoll

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