Why You Should Let Your Daughter Dress Like a Princess

From Cosmopolitan

What is it about pink that causes such loathing? Such unease? (Especially if we consider how dull our lives would be without pink sunsets and pink champagne.)

I know far too many intelligent women who roll their eyes in disgust when the color is even mentioned - because of course, "pink" might as well be another word for "princess." And princesses are "girly." And, for some reason (especially if you're a mother), giving into anything princessy or girly is about as socially acceptable as believing in unicorns.

Some women think letting pink anywhere near them implies that they're against female empowerment, bad feminists or, at best, weak or silly.

Well, someone in this debate is definitely being silly.

"Girly" is not the opposite of empowerment. Femininity is not incompatible with ambition. And obstacles preventing women from reaching the top are a great deal more substantive than their color preferences.

I have a 3-year-old daughter, and I hope she grows up to be a smart, kind and confident adult. If that doesn't happen, the blame should fall on me and my lack of parental guidance - not the pink bows in her hair, the pink pillows on her bed, or the pink toys in her room.

Allowing a girl to wear a pink princess dress doesn't mean she will never become a member of the Supreme Court or win the Nobel Prize for physics. Nor does it mean she's destined to live a life of wifely compliance. We have to give girls some credit. And give the poor color a break.

My daughter loves pink tutus and sparkly tiaras just as much as she loves dinosaurs and slugs. I'm not a personal fan of the slugs (and am struggling to incorporate them into a birthday party), but parents shouldn't ever have to defend their children's preferences - whatever they may be. It's not about making girls choose between green dinosaurs and pink princesses - it's about allowing them to feel it's perfectly acceptable to love both.

The anti-pink movement bothers me sometimes, as it seems to subtly imply that if a girl prefers pink toys, then there is no way she can also be outgoing and self-assured. Or if she likes princesses, then that automatically makes me (her mom) ambivalent to commercial forces. But such sweeping generalizations about girls and women can make these campaigners seem just as divisive as the sexist marketing techniques they denounce.

I agree that girls deserve more choices than the endless pink products that are peddled to them. And I understand that nonstop princess-themed merchandise offers a one-dimensional view of femininity. But fighting a ceaseless battle against corporate marketing, boycotting pink products, or insisting on gender-neutral child rearing are not the solutions.

Rather than making pink and girly toys obsolete, we need to start changing our attitudes toward them. Because it's not just girls who get the raw deal; boys suffer too - and, in my opinion, they suffer in a far more worrying way.

Imagine that your son needs a hula hoop for a physics project, yet refuses to use the pink sparkly one from the pink aisle (which is the only kind you can find). If that's where it begins - where does it end? What other things might boys feel compelled to turn away from because of their feminine connotations? Nurturing? Compassion? Empathy? Feelings of any kind? Parenting? Helping out around the house?

Reversing the reputation of pink, girly, and feminine to one of power rather than weakness affects us all. It affects the future gender equality of our world.

Yet I know plenty of mothers who flatly refuse to allow their daughters anything pink, anything princess-related, or any toy that is vaguely domestic or maternal because they fear it will hold girls back in some way. But responding to limitation with further limitation is not the way forward.

It's OK to be frustrated with the excessiveness of pink, princess-themed marketing, but refusing to allow toys that seem inherently "girly" can send a dangerous message: that being a girl is not good enough; that feminine expression is a source of shame.

I understand that much of the anti-pink, anti-princess uproar stems from a heartfelt desire to shield all our little girls from the harsh realities of the real world, to protect them from any crushing disappointments that might arise in their future.

And my hunch is this: Once upon a time, most of these princess detractors had their own fairytale dreams. (Yep. Even them. Because everyone does.) Yet they grew up and quickly realized that not all people are charming, princes rarely show up on white horses, and nothing guarantees happily ever after.

For most of us, life is harder than we ever imagined it would be. We've stopped dreaming about castles and ball gowns because now we're worried about paying the mortgage and finding the right health insurance, about taking too much maternity leave and not getting promoted. We're worried about pollution in our water, chemicals in our food, bullies on the playground, guns in the classroom, porn on the Internet, gang rape on campus, and terrorists in the sky.

So, when little girls look up at us and say, "I want to be a princess," our hearts skip a beat. We panic. And instead of buying her a pink dress or pink toy that we know she'll love, we forge ahead and insist she wear something yellow and play with something wooden, and refuse to take her to see the next Disney princess movie.

As if that alone could protect her. As if that alone could stop her from dreaming.

But I suspect what we really want to whisper back at them is this: "I wanted to be a princess too. In fact, I still want to be one...."

Fairytale dreams are enduring. They don't go away simply by changing the color scheme. You can paint them any color you want or no color at all, but, mark my words: They can, and will, live on.

From the new book In Defense of the Princess: How Plastic Tiaras and Fairytale Dreams can Inspire Smart, Strong Women by Jerramy Fine. Copyright ? 2016 by Jerramy Fine. Published March 22, 2016 by Running Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group.

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