What's Wrong With Cinderella Summary

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"What's Wrong with Cinderella", an article in the 2006 New York Times, discusses the toxicity of the Disney Princess era and all the princess products, and how it largely contributes to forcing gender roles on young girls and pushes young girls to heighten their sense of being feminine. Peggy Orenstein, the author of the article and a mother to a young girl herself, doesn't like the concept of princesses and explains how everyone associates girls with princesses. Several issues and concerns are raised regarding the physical and mental impact that the younger generation might have from the excessiveness of the princess theme toys, clothing and animation. The writer believes that young girls are being influenced to think that beauty is determined …show more content…

Whereas Peggy Orenstein believes that girls should be more like boys more focus on real career choices, and grow up to be successful businesswomen rather than desiring to be life fairytale princesses. She believes little girls have been brainwashed into wanting to be perfect little girls and not participate in average children activities, such as sports because they feel it's unfeminine. It seems that Orenstein feels her daughter does not consider herself a girl if she doesn't follow the princess role. However, pushing back toward that argument, are there issues raising a daughter unisex and not reinforcing the female gender role at all? There are a few drawbacks to raising a daughter unisex. For one, it may come off to a child that being feminine is bad. Relationships can also become a conflict in the society we live in today. If a daughter is raised unisex, she may tend to also have traits that are more masculine, such as having the tendency to be more dominant. This can become a problem in a relationship because in our society today, men are dominant and lead relationships and a woman raised unisex may clash with a man raised as their typical gender …show more content…

By raising a daughter unisex and telling them they can "have it all" and do it all, more pressure is put on the child to be it all, and by telling a girl that they can be anything, the message unintentionally is received as they need to be everything. A big problem is that in order for raising daughters unisex to achieve something and for the girls to not become outcasts in society, many families would have to raise their daughters unisex. Raising one girl unisex will lead her to not fit into our society that has created distinct gender categories, rather, a large group of people, or rather a movement, would need to take place for such a thing to work and create a society that doesn't push children raised this way out of their gender box. I have three girls and agree with Peggy Orenstein, but also think that girls should have their time to be kids and love princesses. Every little girl loves princesses at first but anyone who has kids knows that as they grow up and become teenagers the princess effect begins to fade off and they begin to think that things princess related are childish. Teen girls like my 13-year-old daughter then have their own

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