Cinderella Ate My Daughter (9 page)

Of course, that “special time” did not have to involve dressing up like Pretty Baby. Still, I could sympathize with the pride—the relief—the Eschbergers must feel whenever Taralyn is crowned, when she is publicly celebrated not only for her normalcy but for her miraculous perfection. I could only imagine how difficult the family’s path has been, the lifelong burden Taralyn will carry: the mixture of resentment and protectiveness, love and guilt. She did deserve something of her own, a place to be free, to be a child—maybe even, for a moment, to feel that she, or at least her life, is perfect. And isn’t that, at its core, what the princess fantasy is about for all of us? “Princess” is how we tell little girls that they are special, precious. “Princess” is how we express our aspirations, hopes, and dreams for them. “Princess” is the wish that we could protect them from pain, that they would never know sorrow, that they will live happily ever after ensconced in lace and innocence.

I had seen several television shows featuring the Eschbergers, but none had mentioned Tallon. I suspect that would have complicated the story, elicited sympathy from the disapproving audience, humanized the parents—thrown shades of gray into a narrative that is best seen in black and white. I’m not letting the Eschbergers (or parents like them) off the hook, but it is so easy to portray the freak-show aspects of these families. No question, they have taken the obsession with girls’ looks to an appalling extreme; but, one could argue, the difference between them and the rest of us may be more one of degree than of kind. “Ordinary” parents might balk at the $3,000 dress or the spray tan, but guess what? In 2007, we spent a whopping $11.5 billion on clothing for our seven- to fourteen-year-olds, up from $10.5 billion in 2004. Close to half of six- to nine-year-old girls regularly use lipstick or gloss, presumably with parental approval; the percentage of eight- to twelve-year-olds who regularly use mascara and eyeliner doubled between 2008 and 2010, to 18 and 15 percent, respectively. “Tween” girls now spend more than $40 million a
month
on beauty products. No wonder Nair, the depilatory maker, in 2007 released Nair Pretty, a fruit-scented line designed to make ten-year-olds conscious of their “unwanted” body hair. And who, according to the industry tracking group NPD, most inspires girls’ purchases? Their moms. As a headline on the cheeky feminist Web site Jezebel.com asked, “How Many 8-Year-Olds Have to Get Bikini Waxes Before We Can All Agree the Terrorists Have Won?”

Watching the pageant contestants promenade onstage, I thought about a suburban shopping mall I had visited some months earlier to check out a store called Club Libby Lu. Aimed at the VIP (Very Important Princess) ages four to twelve—again, a span whose extremes, it seems, should have little in common—it was conceived of by Mary Drolet, a Chicago-area mother and former executive at Claire’s (she later sold out to Saks for $12 million). Walking into a link of the chain, I had to tip my tiara to her: Libby Lu’s design was flawless, from the logo (a crown-topped heart) to the colors (pink, pink, pink, purple, and more pink) to the display shelves scaled to the size of a ten-year-old (though most of the shoppers I saw were closer to six). The decals on the walls and dressing rooms—
I LOVE YOUR HAIR, HIP CHICK, SPOILED
—were written in what they called “girlfriend language.” The young salesclerks at this “special secret club for superfabulous girls” were called “club counselors.” The malls themselves were chosen based on a secret formula called the GPI, or “Girl Power Index,” which, in an Orwellian bit of doublespeak, predicts potential profitability.

Inside, I browsed through midriff-baring tops with
ROCK STAR
scrawled across them in sequins, cheerleader outfits, feather-covered princess phones, pillows emblazoned with the word
BLING
in rhinestones. I moseyed over to the “Style Studio,” where a seven-year-old girl was being transformed into a “Priceless Princess” through a “Libby Du” makeover. Her hair was teased into an elaborate updo, crowned with a tiara, and liberally sprayed with glitter. Blue eye shadow was stroked across her lids, followed by a dusting of blush and watermelon pink lip gloss.
Hello, Taralyn!
Libby Lu also offered birthday parties at which, after their makeovers, girls could ramp up the tunes and strut a catwalk pretending to be Pussycat Dolls or supermodels. So, okay, they weren’t competing for money (however, the makeovers
cost
as much as $35 per child), and they probably were not doing it every weekend—though kids do go to an awful lot of birthday parties, and they are often all the same—but still, how different was the message?

When Libby Lu started, the typical customer was about ten, but over the next few years that age gradually drifted downward, so that the girls I saw making their own cosmetics at the Sparkle Spa station were closer to Taralyn’s age. Marketers call that KGOY—Kids Getting Older Younger. The idea, similar to the rejection of Barbie for Bratz by six-year-olds, is that toys and trends start with older children, but younger ones, trying to be like their big brothers and sisters, quickly adopt them. That immediately taints them for the original audience. And so the cycle goes. That’s why the cherry-flavored Bonne Bell Lip Smackers that I got as my first “real” makeup at age twelve are now targeted at four- to six-year-olds (who collect flavors by the dozens). I have often idly wondered, since those same KGOY theorists claim that adults stay
younger
older—fifty is the new thirty!—whether our children will eventually surpass us in age. Or perhaps we will all meet at a mutually agreed upon ideal, a forever twenty-one.

But I don’t want my daughter to be twenty-one when she is twelve. I don’t think
she
will want to be twenty-one when she is twelve, not really. As it is, girls are going through puberty progressively earlier. The age of onset of menstruation has dropped from seventeen at the beginning of the twentieth century to barely twelve today; pediatricians no longer consider it exceptional for an eight-year-old to develop breasts. That means ten-year-old girls frequently resemble sexually mature women—sexually mature women who have been encouraged, in an unprecedented way, to play at being hot since early childhood. Yet, although they are physically more advanced, the pace of girls’ psychological and emotional development has remained unchanged; they only look, and act, older on the outside. In his thoughtful book
The Triple Bind
, Stephen Hinshaw, the chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, warns that imposing any developmental task on children before they are ready can cause irreparable, long-term harm. Consider the trend toward academically accelerated preschool: at best, young children who are drilled on letters and numbers show no later advantage compared with those in play-based programs. In some cases, by high school their outcomes are
worse
. That inappropriately early pressure seems to destroy the interest and joy in learning that would naturally develop a few years later. Girls pushed to be sexy too soon can’t really understand what they’re doing. And that, Hinshaw argues, is the point: they do not—and may never—learn to connect their performance to erotic feelings or intimacy. They learn how to act desirable but not how to desire, undermining rather than promoting healthy sexuality.

It would seem, then, that parents should be working harder than ever to protect their daughters’ childhoods, to prevent them from playing Sesame Street Walker. And most parents you would talk to, whatever their policy on child-friendly eye shadow for three-year-olds, would say that is exactly what they are trying to do. But I can’t help recalling an article describing the ways pageant moms rationalize their behavior. Two strategies particularly caught my eye. The first was “denial of injury”—the idea that the children are not harmed by the experience and may actually benefit. The second was “denial of responsibility”: they may personally disapprove of pageants, but their four-year-olds
so
wanted to compete that they had no choice but to comply. Rejigger that wording a bit, substitute “Disney Princess 21-piece play makeup set” or “mani-pedi birthday party” or “Rock & Republic Jeans,” and it sounds like a conversation you would hear on any suburban playground.

I don’t mean to imply that shielding one’s daughter from sexually charged toys, clothing, music, and images is easy. They are, after all, standard fare in the aisles of the big-box stores. Even Walmart’s size 4–6X Sassy Vampiress Halloween getup with its tight pink-and-black bustier top (for what bust, I ask you?) hardly raises an eyebrow. One exception: in 2010, a video went viral featuring a group of eight- and nine-year-old competitors in a national contest—dressed in outfits that would make a stripper blush—bumping and pumping to Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” The routine sparked public outcry, was berated on CNN and FOX News, and truly, it was a gift to the world’s wired pedos. But I sympathized (sort of) with the girls’ parents, who went on
Good Morning America
to defend them: the choreography had been lifted from a scene in
Alvin and the Chipmunks 2
, in which gratuitously tarted-up “Chipettes” shook their furry booties to the same tune while Al and his bros leered. No one had objected to
that
. The girls were only mimicking what they had seen in a family film (which, by the by, has raked in more than $440 million worldwide).

I am hardly one to judge other mothers’ choices: my own behavior has been hypocritical, inconsistent, even reactionary. There was the time when Daisy was four and we were walking through the Los Angeles airport on the way to visit her paternal grandma. Daisy’s eye fell on a display of Ty Girlz dolls, made by the same company that brought you Beanie Babies, best known for the faux pas of creating dolls based on Malia and Sasha Obama without permission (which the company was forced to rename). Ty Girlz are like a plush version of Bratz, for the fashion-forward preschooler. They have names such as “Oo-LaLa Olivia,” “Classy Carla,” and “Sizzlin’ Sue.” But they’re cuddly. And apparently they exude some invisible gamma ray that hypnotizes small girls. “Mama!” Daisy cried, dashing over to the wire rack of dolls that had been placed in front of a newsstand. “Can I have one of those?” I took in the Angelina Jolie lips, the heavily shadowed eyelids, the microscopic skirts, the huge hair—and I kept right on walking.

“No,” I said.

“But maybe for my birthday?” she tried.

Something in me snapped. “No!” I said, more firmly than was strictly necessary. “Not for your birthday, not for Chanukah, not for anything. You will never
, ever
get one of those dolls!”

“But
why not
?” she pressed.

I wanted to yell,
“BECAUSE THEY’RE
SLUTTY
,
THAT’S WHY!”
But I didn’t, because Lord knows I did not want to have to explain what “slutty” meant. Instead I relied on the default parenting phrase, a prim “Because they’re inappropriate.”

“But
why
are they unappropriate?”

Suddenly I was furious. Why should I even have been put into a position where I had to have this conversation with my four-year-old? I felt as though Ty Girlz had me over a barrel, a barrel to whose slats I would have to become increasingly accustomed. I didn’t want to tell her why I objected to the dolls, because the explanation itself was as “unappropriate” as the product. And, yes, it could have been an opportunity for yet another lesson, but I was sick and tired of being confronted by these endless “teachable moments.” It was beginning to dawn on me that I had been caught in a cunningly laid trap: I was attempting to offer Daisy more choices—a broader view of her possibilities, of her femininity—by repeatedly saying no to her every request. What were the odds
that
was going to work? Even the forbidden-fruit argument I so often hear seemed a scam: it still forced me to buy something I did not even want her to know about in the hope that it would quench her desire rather than stoke it, that she would, as Disney’s Andy Mooney had said, “pass through the phase” rather than internalize it (earning his company a tidy profit in the meanwhile).

So I found myself ping-ponging through girl land. I gave in on Polly Pocket with her endless itty-bitty rubber clothes, but not to the Pollywheels Race to the Mall racetrack set (“The first car to reach the boutique captures a shopping bag!”). Yes to Groovy Girls (which, like Pollys, have gotten markedly skinnier and more fashion-conscious since they were introduced), but absolutely no way to Ty Girlz. And Barbie? Oh, Barbie, Barbie, Barbie. The fifty-year-old vector of all body-image complaints. She, too, has been the catalyst of many a toy store meltdown—mine, not my daughter’s. I am not proud of the incident at Target when, while I was off searching for cleanser, Steven told Daisy she could have a cheesy blue Fairytopia Barbie with crappy plastic wings. I demanded that he take it away from her. She started to cry. So I gave it back.

“You’re confusing her,” Steven said.

I did the mature thing: I blamed him.

“Look, I’m sorry I started this,” he replied. “But you need to decide where you stand on this stuff and stick to it.”

He was right, so I took the doll away again. I promised I would get her a
well-made
Barbie instead, perhaps a Cleopatra Barbie I had seen on eBay, which, at the very least, was not white or blond and had something to offer besides high-heeled feet. As if the ankh pendant and peculiar tan made it all okay.

“Never mind, Mama,” she sobbed. “I don’t need it.” Then I started to cry, too, and bought her the damned Barbie.