Peggy Orenstein: I think part of it was that I had been the supposed expert for the last 20 years, so I had 20 years of anxiety. Is having a daughter really that much more precarious than it was, say, 20 years ago? Mother Jones: You wrote that you had originally wanted a boy because you were afraid you might not be able to handle a daughter. Referring to the nearly half of six- to nine-year-old girls who wear lipstick or gloss, Orenstein tells me, “I don’t know why the percentage is not zero.” Read on for her lowdown on gender-branded diapers, Facebook’s dark side, and how the parents of preschool beauty queens are more like us than we’d care to admit. Orenstein hangs out with teachers, teenyboppers, marketing execs, social scientists, tots in tiaras, and her own seven-year-old to probe the beguiling contradictions of our growing girly-girl culture. It’s the whole onslaught.” Cinderella Ate My Daughter is a highly entertaining (and disconcerting) romp. Where do Disney princesses fall on a 1-to-10 scale of harm to a girl’s identity? How about Bratz, pink mania, Facebook? “All of this stuff seems 1, but might be 10, and you don’t really know,” says author and New York Times Magazine essayist Peggy Orenstein as we chat about her new book. Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
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