www.npr.org
The campaign to market princess stuff to pre-school age girls seems to have been sparked in part by homemade princess costumes on tiny ice-skaters. So I ask: Could some patriotic group like the League of Women Voters instead offer all infants a recording of "This Land is Your Land," and a coloring book with stories of civic activists? Could little ice skaters dress up like Mother Jones or Eleanor Roosevelt or even make do with warm tights, a sweatshirt sans trademarked image or clever saying, and a cute wedge hair-cut?
Disney has begun targeting a yet untapped market: newborn babies. The news disturbed commentator Peggy Orenstein, who argues that moms, especially brand new moms, should be able to escape the "princess industrial complex."
Reading this after our 101 discussions of Disney's Pocahontas and of the notion of a "natural aristocracy;" while we are in the midst of semester devoted to democracy; and having just considered Whitman's plea for a national literary mythos . . . (breathe) . . . I wish that this story astonished me. I wish that I were shocked that tiny infants are targeted for induction into a commercial substitute for the rich, evocative common culture Whitman called for. I wish that I were surprised that at its heart this is an offer of a false identity premised on class privilege and potentially narrow gender stereotypes.
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