Cinderella Ate My Daughter (19 page)

We headed into the family library, its shelves stacked with bestselling books by authors such as John Grisham and James Patterson. A volume from the
Gossip Girl
series lay on a table between two computers. A third computer sat on a desk pushed against an adjacent wall. DeCesare had asked her twins to show me around the site, so I could experience it as users would. Her son immediately sat down and began gaming. He did not say much during the rest of my visit. Her daughter Danielle, meanwhile, plopped down in another chair and turned sideways toward me, swinging her feet, her toes tipped with chipped green polish, as she showed off her home page. She had customized the background with a photo of the stars of the
Twilight
series, listed her favorite singer as Taylor Swift and her favorite show as
iCarly
. Her groups included Ro’s Soccer Club (started by her little sister),
Star Wars
, and Fashion 101.

DeCesare had told me, as a selling point, that there would be no advertising on Everloop. But watching Danielle, I realized that didn’t matter: product promotions are so thoroughly embedded online that ads would be redundant. In addition to groups created by the kids themselves, Everloop will feature corporate-sponsored “supergroups.” Imagine an exercise group hosted by Nike, a video group hosted by Flip, a hygiene group hosted by Bonne Bell. Users will also be able to buy “stickers” of favorite products and performers to put on their home pages—a gimmick that basically convinces them to pay for advertising. All of that is in keeping with the larger “advergaming” trend on Internet sites for kids: in the popular virtual world Millsberry (owned by General Mills) users can explore the “Honey Nut Cheerios Greenhouse”; at the not-for-profit Whyville they can drive a Toyota Scion; or work at the McDonald’s in Habbo Hotel; or hang out in the CosmoGirl lounge at There.com. Parents are often warned that, until children are six, they cannot distinguish between commercials and programming on TV. With the Internet, there is no longer a distinction to make—for them or for us. Frankly, I would prefer traditional advertising to all this embedded stuff; as a parent, I would feel less duped.

When I first met DeCesare, I was jazzed about her site, even though it seemed a little preachy. Now I felt myself beginning to turn. I appreciated the safeguards against sexual deviants, but where was the protection against other sorts of predation? How about some tips on resisting covert marketing along with the ones on combating cyberbullies? A site like Everloop may be fun, even imaginative, but it will also roll back the age at which children will create and present themselves as a brand, one composed of various products and media, most of which portray both girls and boys in stereotypical ways. If that is unhealthy for a college student, I can’t see how it would be desirable for an eight-year-old.

DeCesare reminded me that parents had the option to filter any or all of that out. That may be, I said, but realistically, how long could it last? “We’re not claiming we’re perfect,” she responded. “But it is presumed we’re going to be creating an environment that’s empowering to the kids.”

There was that word again: “empowering.” She meant that Everloop would allow kids to play online freely yet safely. But really, could any environment be truly empowering if it pushes kids—and girls in particular, since they are more active in social networks—to define themselves by what they buy, how they look, whom they idolize, what they watch? It is telling that girls’ embrace of online culture is not translating into their adult ambitions. Even as the percentage of girls using the Internet has soared, the percentage of female college students majoring in computer science has plummeted, dropping by 70 percent between 2000 and 2005. The gender gap in consuming Internet culture may have closed, but the one in creating it has only grown wider.

I would like to ignore the online world of kids—the complications seem endless and overwhelming—but, like any parent today, I can’t. I would rather Daisy spend her time honing her identity on an offline playground than an online one, through face-to-face relationships and real-life activities. I do not want the Web to be where she defines her femininity or asserts her independence, any more than my mom wanted me to test mine by hopping on a bus to the mall with her Shoppers Charge in hand. Yet parents also have to be realists, and, as DeCesare reminded me, this is the world in which our children are being raised. “At Everloop, we’re trying to give kids unexpected freedom while giving parents like you peace of mind,” she assured me. Maybe she is right. Maybe our kids do need those training wheels—and maybe recognizing that will turn DeCesare into the next Tom Anderson, one of the founders of MySpace, who sold out to Rupert Murdoch for $580 million. But for now, she said, “our goal is simple: to get kids ready for the real world, to prepare them for when they go on to other sites. Because,” she added, “you know they will.”

Chapter Ten
-
Girl Power—No, Really

I
didn’t like that princess,” Daisy said, wrinkling her nose. “She looked funny.”

It was two weeks before Christmas 2009, and that could mean only one thing: the annual release of a new animated Disney film. That year,
The Princess and the Frog
premiered amid a blitz of self-congratulatory hype about the studio’s First African-American Princess (though the more impressive event will be the introduction of the
Second
or maybe the
Third
African-American Princess). America’s first black president had been elected just weeks before, the news media enthused, and—as if the two were equivalent—now this! About two-thirds of the audience at our local multiplex had been African American—parents with little girls decked out in gowns and tiaras—which was undeniably striking, even moving. Still, my own response, characteristically, was mixed: sure, it was about time Disney made up for the racism of
Song of the South
,
The Jungle Book
, and
Dumbo
(and
Aladdin
and
Peter Pan
), but was peddling a café au lait variation of the same old rescue fantasy in a thin-and-pretty package the best way to do that? Was that truly cause for celebration?

“But it’s different for black girls,” my friend Verna had told me. Verna, who is African American, is mother to a nine-year-old daughter. She is also a law professor specializing in the intersection of race, gender, and class in education law and policy. “There’s a saying in our community,” she continued, “ ‘We love our sons but we raise our daughters.’ Girls learn that you have to
do
. You have to be the worker bee. Princess takes black girls out of that realm. And you know, discounting the baggage of how stultifying being placed on a pedestal can be … ” She laughed. “If you’ve never been on it, it looks pretty good.”

I took the point, I guess. Certainly, as the mother of a biracial child myself, I identified with the constant scavenger hunt for toys and images that in
some
way resembled my kid. Take the wooden dollhouse I bought for Daisy: its choice of families spanned the skin tone spectrum, but the manufacturer’s progressiveness did not extend to miscegenation (or, for that matter, to gay parents). I ended up buying two sets, one white and one Asian, so she could mix and match. It was, at best, an imperfect solution.

Scarcity breeds scrutiny. Given how few black female leads there are in G-rated animation (Anyone? Anyone?), Tiana, fairly or not, was expected to
represent
.
The Princess and the Frog
was subject to months of speculation before it opened. Outrage bubbled up when the first pass at Tiana’s name was revealed: “Maddy,” which sounded uncomfortably close to “Mammy.” Disney also miscalculated, according to scuttlebutt, by initially making the character a chambermaid for a white woman; in the end, Tiana is a waitress at a restaurant owned by an African-American man. The texture of her hair, the shade of her skin, the fullness of her features, were all debated, as was the suspiciously indeterminate ethnicity of her prince (described as “olive-skinned,” he spoke with a Brazilian accent). Disney shrewdly tried to bullet-proof the film by consulting Oprah Winfrey (who also voiced Tiana’s mother, Eudora), the NAACP, and an organization called Mocha Moms. Take,
that
, critics! Of course, in the end, Tiana spent most of the film as a (shapely, long-eyelashed) amphibian, which rendered her race more or less moot.

Now here was my daughter, my very own daughter, saying that something about the princess looked off…
why
?

“You thought Tiana looked funny?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral.

She shook her head impatiently. “No,” she said. “Not Tiana. The
princess
.”

“But Tiana
was
the princess,” I said.

She shook her head again. “The
princess
,” she repeated, then, after a moment, added, “I liked when she helped the African-American girl, though.”

That was when it clicked: Daisy wasn’t talking about Tiana; she was talking about Lotte, Tiana’s Caucasian friend and foil.
The
Princess and the Frog
opened in a flashback: the two of them, as little girls, sitting on the floor of Lotte’s icing pink room, while Eudora, a seamstress, read them the story of the princess and the frog. Tiana recoiled as the plot unspooled; Lotte swooned. It was Lotte who had row upon row of pink princess gowns and a pink canopy bed; Lotte was the one who wished on stars; Lotte had the encyclopedic knowledge of fairy tales; Lotte dreamed of marrying the handsome prince and living happily ever after; Lotte, as an ingénue, swept her hair into a Cinderella ’do for the ball. And it was Lotte who, while ultimately good-hearted, was also spoiled, shallow, and ridiculous—oh, and funny-looking; whatever strides Disney has made on race, “ugly” and its stepsibling “fat” still connote stupid or evil in its films. So it was clear—to me, anyway—that the viewer was supposed to dislike, or at least disidentify with, Lotte. But I understood Daisy’s confusion: Lotte was also everything that, up until now, Disney has urged our daughters to be and to buy. How was a little girl to interpret that? How were we parents to interpret it? Was Disney mocking itself ? Could the studio actually be uneasy with the frenzy of acquisitiveness it had created? Was it signaling that parents should be more on guard against the very culture it had foisted on us?

Yeah, probably not, but Daisy’s mix-up gave me the opening I needed to talk with her (“
with
” being the operative word) about the way the film had presented girls and women, to solicit her own ideas about it. That, in the end, is the best weapon we parents have, short of enrolling our daughters in one of those schools where kids knit all day (or moving to Sweden; marketing to children under twelve there is actually
illegal
—can you believe it?). We have only so much control over the images and products to which they are exposed, and even that will diminish over time. It is strategic, then—absolutely vital—to think through our own values and limits early, to consider what we approve or disapprove of and why.

I can’t say what others’ personal threshold ought to be: that depends on one’s child, one’s parenting style, one’s judgment, one’s own personal experience. It would be disingenuous to claim that Disney Princess diapers or Ty Girlz or
Hannah Montana
or
Twilight
or the latest Shakira video or a Facebook account is inherently harmful. Each is, however, a cog in the round-the-clock, all-pervasive media machine aimed at our daughters—and at us—from womb to tomb; one that, again and again, presents femininity as performance, sexuality as performance, identity as performance, and each of those traits as available for a price. It tells girls that how you look is more important than how you feel. More than that, it tells them that how you look
is
how you feel, as well as who you are. Meanwhile, the notion that we parents are sold, that our children are “growing up faster” than previous generations, that they are more mature and sophisticated in their tastes, more savvy in their consumption, and there is nothing we can (or need) do about it is—what is the technical term again?—oh yes:
a load of crap
. Today’s three-year-olds are no better than their predecessors at recognizing when their desires are manipulated by grown-ups. Today’s six-year-olds don’t get the subtext of their sexy pirate costumes. Today’s eight-year-olds don’t understand that ads are designed to sell them something. And today’s fourteen-year-olds are still desperate for approval from their friends—all 622 of them.

I never expected, when I had a daughter, that one of my most important jobs would be to protect her childhood from becoming a marketers’ land grab. I have begun to see myself as that hazel tree in the Grimms’ version of Cinderella (minus the Mom-being-dead part): my branches offering her shelter, my roots giving her strength. Instead of stepsisters and stepmother, though, the new “wicked” is an amalgam of images, products, and pitches that, just as surely, threaten to limit and undermine her. I refuse to believe that parents are helpless. We can provide alternatives, especially in the critical early years when children’s brains are most malleable: choices that appeal to their desire to
be girls
yet reflect parents’ values, worldview, and dreams for them—which I am guessing, unless you are Billy Ray Cyrus, do not include executing squat thrusts in an oversized cage while wearing thigh-high boots and a bird costume. (Billy Ray may want to consider Chris Rock’s epiphany after his wife gave birth to a girl: that, as a father, his sole task is to
keep my baby off the pole
.)

I won’t lie: it takes work to find other options, and if you are anything like me, your life is already brimful with demands. I know I feel maxed out trying to be a functioning professional, a loving wife, and a fully present mother all at once—and I have only one kid. It would be so much easier to let it slide, to buy whatever it is that will make your daughter happy and keep her occupied for fifteen minutes. You can worry about the rest later, right? If it is any comfort, I have found that I get as much out of making the effort as Daisy does. It’s sort of like taking the time to cook myself rather than stopping for fast food (or at
least
driving the extra mile to pick up a healthier form of takeout). In fact, the rising consciousness about kids’ nutrition shows the transformative impact parents can have: organic produce is now available at many grocery stores, farmers’ markets are thriving, a sweeping federal overhaul of school lunch menus is in the works. Even McDonald’s has retooled its menu. If we can force change in the food industry, why not do the same for toys and media?

I wish I could tell you that I had reached my own goals: getting my daughter outside more, taking walks in the woods together, playing sports, making art. Occasionally I have—and I advocate all of that—but mostly, I have just gotten a lot more canny about how we participate in the consumer culture. For the price of one Cinderella gown, for instance, I bought a dozen Papo figurines—tiny knights, princesses, pirates, dragons, unicorns, a stray Maid Marian, a random Joan of Arc—that were not “synergistically” marketed as clothing, home decor, Web sites, DVDs, and breath mints. Perhaps because of that, the play they inspired was less rote, more creative, while still acceptably royal. (I tried slipping a Jane Austen action figure into the mix as well, but, alas, she didn’t take.) At bedtime we continue to read legends, mythology, and fairy tales—all of which teem with complex female characters that fire a child’s imagination—and have added, among other things, women’s stories from biblical literature. Who knew that without Moses’ sister Miriam, the Israelites would have died of thirst while wandering the desert?

Speaking of which, if we were stuck on a desert island with a DVD player and could have only one disc, I would want it to be a film by Hayao Miyazaki—gorgeous animation, rich stories, as much a treat for adults as they are for kids. Miyazaki is sometimes called “the Walt Disney of Japan,” but that diminishes his brilliance as well as his respect for the youngest members of his audience: he never panders creatively or intellectually. The female protagonists in his films—which include
My Neighbor Totoro
,
Laputa: The Castle in the Sky
, and
Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind
—are refreshingly free of agenda, neither hyperfeminine nor drearily feminist. They simply
happen
to be girls, as organically as, in other directors’ films, they
happen
to be boys. In one of my favorites,
Kiki’s Delivery Service
, a thirteen-year-old witch must, according to custom, leave her home to find her purpose in the larger world. Her transformation ultimately hinges on self-knowledge rather than a cute makeover or love’s first kiss. (Disney distributes the films in the United States and dubs them into English. Apparently, the studio could not fully keep its paws off: Kiki wears a black witch’s dress throughout the film; in this version
only
she says, “I wish it were lilac.”)

It turns out, too, that, at least with younger children, “no” is a useful tactic. Your three-year-old has no interest in critical thinking, no ear for subtlety. Your attempt to deconstruct a product or sales pitch, even at its most rudimentary, sounds to her like the squawking of the grown-ups in
Peanuts.
The only thing that penetrates is PRINCESSES and TOOTHPASTE TUBE. Limiting her access to toys or media may inspire some grumbling but will not necessarily create the “forbidden fruit” effect that parents fear. According to a 1999 study, elementary school students who didn’t watch violent TV at home were least interested in it in the laboratory. Meanwhile, a 2009 study found that kids that age who were shown violent film clips as part of a media literacy class later reported
more
willingness to use aggression; those taught the curriculum without the clips did not. That said, pointing out inaccurate or unrealistic portrayals of women to younger grade school children—ages five to eight—does seem to be effective, when done judiciously: talking to little girls about body image and dieting, for example, can actually
introduce
them to disordered behavior rather than inoculating them against it. I may be taking a bit of a leap here, but to me all of this indicates that if you are creeped out about the characters from
Monster High
, it is fine to keep them out of your house.