Musings on Whether or Not Cinderella Will Eat My Daughter

Bad title for this post? Not sure. But it's in reference to Peggy Orenstein's landmark book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front-Line of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. The basic premise is that there's a new girly-girl, pretty-in-pink, princess-based culture that's taken over American girlhood -- and not for the better.

I read it for the first time in the Fall of 2015, when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. I had been mulling over the idea of a Disney-Princess focused course and, after reading the book, I revamped my entire course in a few weeks. It was all well and good to read Orenstein's thoughts and experiences, but I wanted to discuss it, to talk through the details of her argument, to see what other educated, intelligent individuals thought. And I am so lucky to teach at a university where my students (for the most part) really do engage and grapple with ideas like these.

Since my daughter was born, I've found myself returning to her ideas over and over again, wondering if and when Orenstein's ideas will start to apply to her. Some of her points already resonate with me more than they did the first time I read the book -- and I imagine that as my daughter gets older, and as I continue to reread the book, different points and ideas will strike me as relevant.

For example -- in Chapter 3, "Pinked," Orenstein ponders the question, "Why has girlhood become so monochromatic?" She muses, "It's not that pink is intrinsically bad, but it is such a tiny slice of the rainbow, and, though it may celebrate girlhood in one way, it also repeatedly and firmly fuses girls' identity to appearance" (34). She points out that "children weren't color-coded at all until the early twentieth-century" and that, even then, pink was associated more with boys (it was a "muted" version of the powerful red) and blue was more of a girl's color (which is why Disney's Wendy and Alice wear blue dresses). All of this leads up to a discussion of Sesame Street's introduction of Abby Cadabby in 2006:

From L to R: Abby, Zoe, & Rosita

Now, in 2015, I hadn't watched Sesame Street in 25 years so, clearly, I had no context for this. Now, the 25-50 minutes of screen time that my daughter watches is the 1-2 episodes of Sesame Street that we watch in the evenings. (And it's surprisingly entertaining y'all.) The fact that there weren't really female muppets in the cast of Sesame Street wasn't something I had thought about -- and definitely not something I remember from when I was a kid. From what I do remember, Little Me didn't really think of muppets as having a gender identity -- they were just muppets. Bert and Ernie were clearly male, but Big Bird? Grover? It didn't really matter if they were male or female. 

But Abby? Clearly female. And here are Orenstein's thoughts:

"Workshop executives have denied they created Abby with a licensing bonanza in mind; the fact that she is so infinitely marketable, that she dovetailed precisely with the pink-fairy-princess megatrend among girls, was apparently a merely happy coincidence.[...] At every geographic outpost from Disneyland to Sesame Street, executives described the same "taboo-breaking" vision, with an identical self-righteous justification about 'honoring the range of play patterns girls can have.' All this pink-and-pretty, they claimed, was about giving girls more choices, not fewer." (41)

Orenstein's point is what she identifies as the "pink factor" -- this idea in corporate marketing that if you make a regular item, and then you make it in pink, girls will want the pink version. Like the Little Tikes Cozy Coupe:

The "traditional" one is the red and yellow one--but of course there's a pink version (for girls). There's also a pink princess version that has glitter because...why not?

Me being me, I've pretty much refused to have the pink version of things in my house if there's a "boy" color available (which is usually not overly blue, but more primary colors). My daughter has the red car and loves it. Because primary colors are not inherently masculine and pink is not inherently feminine. And I'm pretty sure she doesn't care what color her toy is -- she just loves that she can ride around in her car like Mommy and Daddy.

So when we first turned on Sesame Street -- in a moment of desperation because my newborn son was crying and I needed something to distract my daughter -- I'll admit that I was curious as to which characters she would be drawn to: would Abby be her favorite just because she was "the girl" or the pretty pink fairy?

The answer? Nope. Not even a little bit.

Her favorites, in order, are:
(1) Elmo
(2) Cookie Monster (although he's a very close second -- and depending on the day, he might be first)
(3) Grover
(4) The Count
(5) Big Bird (or, "Duck" as she calls him)
(6) Abby
And I really think Abby is only on the list because she's so heavily featured. Elmo is definitely her favorite: while he's featured the most, I also think there's something about his character that speaks to toddlers. She loves Cookie Monster because -- well? Who doesn't? He OmNomNomz cookies! And The Count is so high up because of the counting segment where they encourage kids to stomp along.

Maybe when she's older, her favorites will change -- and maybe it will be because of gender differences. But right now? I'd like to think that, like me, she doesn't think monsters and muppets have genders. Elmo is just the red monster who laughs and dances a happy dance when he learns something new. Cookie Monster is just the blue monster who loves to eat cookies (again, who doesn't?). And Abby is just the pink monster with wings who waves a magic wand around.

Right now, Elmo is the stuffed animal she places on her chair each night before bed (along with Beast, but that's a different post) so she knows exactly where it is the next morning. 

Disney's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms Trailer

So, this dropped the other day:

And, yes: that is Keira Knightley. 

I have mixed thoughts about this. 

On the one hand, it's a Disney movie that looks absolutely gorgeous. So of course I'm excited. 

Also in the "plus" column -- my daughter's name is Clara (she was named after a Doctor Who companion though; not the character from The Nutcracker) so if this Clara is a princess (1) she can share a name with a Disney princess and (2) we'll buy ALL the Clara merchandise because, Hi. I'm a good little Disney consumer.

Another plus: this looks like it has  a lot of girl power. Clara looks like she undergoes some sort of warrior princess transformation which could bode well from a gender studies perspective.

And, of course, Misty Copeland. 

But on the other hand....I don't know. It seems a little too Alice in Wonderland to me. Curious girl enters fantasy land with a cast of magical creatures and characters and undergoes a journey of self-discovery which results in her empowerment and subsequent victory over Evil.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love Alice in Wonderland (the Carroll book -- not so much the Disney adaptation, although it was creative in its own way) but that doesn't mean I want the story to become a formula for media companies to use for every coming-of-age story with a female protagonist who travels to a fantasy land. It's been a while since I've seen The Nutcracker (and I'll admit that I've never read the original Hoffman story) so perhaps the story does need some updating. I have vague recollections of the Mouse King fighting the Nutcracker....but Clara saves him by throwing a shoe? And then he whisks her away to the fairy-tale land of flower dances and sugar plum fairies...so, not terribly problematic, but perhaps there's room for improvement/updating. And, after all: that's the true litmus test for a new adaptation of a beloved story: what is the "something new" you're doing with the story?

Let The Memes Begin

I have to admit: I've been a fan of Ryan Reynolds since he was on a show way-back-when called Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place. And Deadpool is such a fun, irreverent movie...this makes me like him that much more.


Although...the first thing I thought of was, "Silly, Ryan Reynolds. The Matterhorn is in Disneyland and that is clearly Cinderella's Castle at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World."

Disney Nerd Problems.

Disney Buys 21st Century Fox -- What Does It Mean?

Honestly, I don't know.

I was an English/Bio double major in college so business deals and economics lie far outside my wheelhouse. (I'd probably recommend the New York Times article on it, or even this piece from CNN Money if you want more business-y specifics.)

What I'm concerned with is what this means for Disney's brand.

After all, Disney has built an empire on being a wholesome, family-friendly, "safe" brand -- which critics take particular issue with, given the company's capitalist and consumer-driven corporate ethos. 

Me? I tend to view the creative team and the businessmen as largely separate. That is, I think (or, I'd like to think) that the people directly involved with the story are concerned with just that: concerned with the story. I don't think Jennifer Lee sits down with her creative team and says, "Hmm. We've got this movie about two sisters -- how can we add something that Corporate can market and merchandize the hell out of?" 

Maybe that's naive. I don't know. After all, the Porgs from The Last Jedi seem like someone high up at LucasFilm said, "Make something cute like an Ewok that we can market and merchandize the hell out of." And they did. (Although--when Frozen did come out, there was that whole lack-of-merchandise thing so...maybe not?) 

But I digress. 

My point is: Disney is essentially synonymous with family-friendly and there's a lot about 21st Century Fox that...well...isn't "very Disney," as we say in my house. 

Fox is no stranger to either animation or superheroes, after all: on the TV side, they've got staples like The Simpsons and Family Guy, which, while they may offer on-point social commentary, their humor is a little "adult" for Disney's brand. On the film side, they've got some of the other Marvel properties like X-men and Deadpool -- the latter of which is definitely off-brand. But if the logic behind Disney's acquisition of Marvel (and, I think, of LucasFilm) was to expand their consumer base by acquiring things that appealed to boys (they needed something to compete with the Princess franchise) well...acquiring some off-brand media could potentially expand that consumer base. 

I get why people are worried that being underneath the Disney umbrella will mean significant changes to, or even the end of, off-brand media, but...I just can't see that happening. After all, Touchstone released Pretty Woman under the Disney umbrella, and that worked out pretty well. The Disney logo didn't pop up on the screen before the film, so it's not like Disney was directly associated with it -- they just reaped the profits.

And, that, I think, is the bigger concern. As Alex McLevy points out in this article at The A.V. Club:

"In the long run, all this merger does is contribute to an increasingly homogenized and calcified corporate dominance of the entertainment industry, with fewer and fewer media companies able to challenge the major studios. And in particular, it will make Disney arguably the most powerful studio that has ever existed. The company will exert even more outsized control than it currently does, muscling in on any turf where it can wrench an extra dollar away from someone who deserves it more."

Yikes. This is where I wish I had a little business/econ knowledge to fully understand the ramifications of this. I mean, I get the basic gist of this, as someone who studies and consumes media, but not the full implications. (Any Duke Econ professors out there want to team up and create a FOCUS cluster???)

But just check out this info-graphic, using information from 2011:

This tidbit is also troubling to me as well:

"Also, it will strip the Fox broadcast network from the studio that produces most of its properties[...]that could mean the death knell for Fox television as we know it. Deadline notes Disney would likely keep brand-affiliated shows like The Gifted and beloved institutions like Simpsonsand Family Guy, but beyond that, “observers do not see Fox continuing as a network focused on scripted programming.” Without control of the studio that provides most of its content, the assumption is that Fox will instead focus more on “sports programming, news magazines, and possibly reality shows” to fill its primetime lineup."

As someone who watches an embarrassing amount of television (my DVR is pretty  much always 90% full -- although I do have a lot of Sesame Street saved these days), that hurts my heart. FOX and ABC are probably my two favorite major networks -- mainly because FOX usually picks up the shows that are more fun and different that other networks steer clear of. (Don't get me started on CBS -- while they have The Big Bang Theory, which I will forever love, their line-up is pretty much shows about white dudes. Hi, it's 2017.) Some of my favorite shows are on FOX: Lucifer, Empire, Brooklyn Nine-Nine...and they picked up Glee and Scream Queens. The idea that "scripted programming" could be sacrificed for more sports (you already have ESPN, Disney!!!) and -- *shudder* -- reality shows, makes me want to cry.

I guess we'll have to wait and see...?