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Article: Princess culture turning girls into overspending narcissists
To all the future parents out there:
Quote:
Princess culture turning girls into overspending narcissists
By Joanne Laucius, The Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA — Sheri Shuler has a four-year-old daughter who is into princesses. Or, rather, Disney princesses and their accoutrements. The dresses, the hair, the tiaras.
This has Shuler concerned. Not the princess part - royalty, both real and fictional, has taught generations of young women the virtues of duty, resourcefulness and re-inventing themselves - but the single-minded frivolity.
"I have a four-year-old who is completely into princesses, but she doesn't know their stories. She knows what Belle's hair looks like and what her dress looks like, but she doesn't know the story," Shuler says.
A communications professor at Creighton University in Nebraska, Shuler decided to take a sabbatical to study what academics are starting to call "princess culture:" young girls inundated by films, books, toys, clothes, and enabled by friends and family who encourage them to see themselves as bona fide blue-bloods.
Little girls have always swanned around in mom's cast-off party frocks while pretending to boss the staff. But observers are concerned about what princess culture is doing to little girls. And what will happen when little princesses grow up to be insufferable adolescents and adults who demand constant adulation and access to a bottomless pot of spending money.
"When she's 15 and you say, 'She's a princess,' that's not good. So where's the transition?" asks personality psychologist Jean Twenge, co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement.
"Why be obsessed with being a princess when you're never going to be one? You can only postpone reality for so long."
Like princesses, narcissists are both born and made. Princess culture helps produce narcissists, says Twenge.
"Overspending and a sense of entitlement are part of narcissism, even if you don't do all that much or work all that hard. Someone who thinks they deserve the best more than likely scores high on narcissism and all the things that follow. People are being treated badly. Narcissism hurts other people."
Dan Cook, who has chronicled the rise of the child consumer in his book The Commodification of Childhood, traces the princess culture to the convergence of a number of events and cultural developments.
First, the women who are now mothers were little girls when Lady Diana Spencer married Prince Charles. They bought the fairytale wedding and a princess who became a pop-culture celebrity.
Next, Disney made a savvy business decision in 2000, when it packaged the female leads on their animated films as "the Princesses" (Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, et al.) and marketed hundreds of pastel princess items, from sippy cups to backpacks.
In 2006, Walt Disney World opened the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, which offers hairstyling, makeup, and manicures and dresses by "fairy godmothers in training" for girls aged three and up. Disney has since introduced a line of bridal gowns and engagement rings inspired by its princesses.
The background of all of this was a post-feminist world where a competent woman no longer had to wear workboots and a scowl to prove her credibility, says Cook, a professor of childhood studies at Rutgers University
"You can be beautiful. Not only that, you should be beautiful. You can wear a bikini and wield a machine gun."
There are some things about princess culture that are empowering to young girls, Cook says. The Cinderella story is about transformation. The sad thing is that the transformation now happens not through optimism and industry, but through buying the right products.
"What is it about certain types of family configurations that conspire with the princess persona that takes it beyond a childhood game?" he wonders.
There are three elements that define the princess, says Twenge. First, she is ultra-feminine. Second, she believes she is someone special. Third, she is in charge.
" `I'm a special person' is one of the questions on the narcissism inventory," Twenge says. "To be special is to be great and better than everybody else."
She says four factors have contributed to the creation of princess culture: over-indulgent parenting, the culture of celebrity, the rise of the Internet, and easy credit. That has made it possible for even more people to "get sucked into the narcissistic system," says Twenge.
"Parents see their role as making their child stand out. You can do that by leaving specialness out of the picture and saying, `I love you.' It's want you mean, anyway, and it's a much better picture."
Shuler has never been successful in entirely banning princesses from her daughter's life. She believes the biggest danger to little girls is that princess images are separated from the stories of smart, resilient young women.
"I don't think these images are inherently harmful. When they're drained of context, that's the harmful thing. When we strip princesses out of the story, we miss many of the potential good lessons.
"It's all about how to navigate it with our values without being killjoys."
It's easy to think the corporate world is simply imposing products on an unsuspecting world, but it's more complicated than that, says Cook. Disney's princess merchandising touched a nerve that already existed, as well as a sweet spot for selling stuff to little girls and their elders who are willing to extend princess-hood far past the primary-school years.
"There was something going on with these girls," Cook says. "So many young girls want to maintain the princess persona past the boundary of playtime. Part of play can be powerfully educational and transformative. But eventually, you have to put it down. What concerns me is the lack of boundaries."
He points out that not every girl who gets a Disney princess party will turn into a monster, just as many feminists played with Barbie, and many a pacifist had a G.I. Joe.
One of the differences for children growing up today from previous generations is that the marketplace is now everywhere, says Cook.
"It's bad and we have to think about it. But I would rather have someone think she's special and beautiful than live in a culture where genital cutting is the norm."
How to tame a princess? Don't even let it start, advises Twenge. Start with nixing any baby clothes that say "Little Princess."
"If she's the princess, it doesn't mean that you are the queen. It means that you are the loyal subject."
Still, Twenge herself has had limited success in stomping on her own daughter's princess ambitions.
"When she was two, she said, `I'm a princess.' I said, `No, you're not.' So she went on eating her breakfast," says Twenge.
More than a year later, at the age of three-and-a-half, her daughter admired her mother in a dress and offered what she thought was the ultimate compliment.
"You look like a princess."
What happens when princesses grow up to become a royal pain
When producers at Frantic Films started looking for princesses, they had no shortage of candidates. Princesses - and their desperate families - applied by the hundreds.
The Slice Network debuts the resulting series, Princess, on Sept. 7. Instead of lifestyles of the rich and famous, it chronicles the woes of women pushed to the brink of bankruptcy by lavish spending on clothes, beauty treatments and, yes, designer shoes.
There's Princess Lee, 33, a Holt Renfrew saleswoman who has $25,000 worth of shoes and handbags. She is, coincidentally, $25,000 in debt.
Princess Ashley just graduated as a social worker and expects to dump her $20,000 debt on her fiance. Princess Laura, 18, who has just graduated from high school, acquired a credit card and spent $1,500 on hair extensions.
Krista Sim, 38, a Waterloo corporate trainer, is one of the princesses. She spent $40 a month in fake eyelashes and $400 in hair care. She has shoes and purses to last a lifetime. Over four years, Sim racked up $57,000 in consumer debt. The financial stress was so great, it was threatening her marriage.
Her definition of princess: "a girl who likes to be pampered, and other people pamper her because she demands that kind of service."
When Sim was a child, her parents called her "my spoiled little princess."
"I learned how to order shrimp cocktail from room service when I was five, " she says. "My mom was always done up to the nines. You live by example."
Sim admits she likes to be treated like a princess. "But I don't have the means."
The series is a sister to Til Debt Do Us Part, with host Gail Vaz-Oxlade advising the financially challenged on how to get back on the path of fiscal restraint.
"A princess, for us, was someone who is living a fabulous life with the latest stuff. But she really can't afford it," says Jennifer Horvath, supervising producer at Frantic Films. "Everyone knows a princess."
The show's princesses have one element in common: They have either allowed or persuaded parents, boyfriends, husbands and credit-card companies to enable their lifestyles, says Horvath.
"Only certain types of people will try to manipulate others," she says. "These people are used to saying what you want to hear to get what they want."
Horvath believes indulgent parents and reality television have contributed to the current crop of princesses.
"Celebrity culture is so much more achievable to people all around the world. You can go on the Internet and get a designer handbag that you wouldn't get in your city. It makes it seem not just desirable, but also reasonable."
Take Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw. The fictional newspaper columnist can afford multiple pairs of Manolo Blahniks and Jimmy Choos - her shoe expenditures were once pegged at $40,000 - but couldn't get a loan when her Manhattan apartment building went co-op. Carrie has to pay for groceries with her credit card. "I just had to charge tomatoes," she laments in one episode.
Young women are also getting their cues from reality shows such as The Hills and Keeping Up With the Kardashians, says Horvath. On Sept. 13, CosmoTV will offer the Canadian premiere of High Society, which follows "Park Avenue Princess" Tinsley Mortimer, a handbag designer and socialite, and her gang of moneyed friends.
"The more you see it, the more normal it seems," says Horvath.
As for Horvath's princesses, only seven of the 13 profiled on the series got the promised $5,000 for having the discipline to toe the financial line.
Sim was one of the prize-winners. She is now a princess in rehabilitation. She has no credit cards and her spending is limited to a $150 weekly allowance. She still likes to splurge once a month on her hair.
Sim doesn't have children, but if she had a daughter, she says she would definitely spoil her.
"I would want her to think she's a princess. But I would want her to learn from my mistakes."
The rise of princess culture
Dan Cook, who has chronicled the rise of the child consumer in his book, The Commodification of Childhood, traces the princess culture to the convergence of a number of events and cultural developments:
* the 1981 marriage of Lady Diana Spencer to Prince Charles
* Disney's decision in 2000 to market hundreds of pastel princess items, from flashlights to DVD players
* the opening in 2006 of Disney World's Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, which offers hairstyling, makeup, and manicures to girls aged three and up, and, most recently, wedding dresses.
"There are three elements that define the princess, says Twenge. First, she is ultra-feminine. Second, she believes she is someone special. Third, she is in charge."
"There are three elements that define the princess, says Twenge. First, she is ultra-feminine. Second, she believes she is someone special. Third, she is in charge."
Sounds like my 5 yr old niece.
you better knock some sense into her now, or make sure her parents do
__________________
Quote:
Originally posted by Girl ^ Yes it's sad when you stare at the shape of my penis through my overly skin tight jeans and not help but feel like a shameful little boy compared to me.
I can name a couple GUYS who fall under the princess category.... self entitlement and overspending indeed.
__________________
"Can you match my resolve? If so then you will succeed. I believe that the human spirit is indomitable. If you endeavour to achieve, it will happen given enough resolve." -- Monty Oum
"There are three elements that define the princess, says Twenge. First, she is ultra-feminine. Second, she believes she is someone special. Third, she is in charge."
Sounds like my 5 yr old niece.
Nothing wrong with the first 2. All little girls should think their special.
It's the third thing you gotta watch out for.
Experience talking - I have 2 daughters.
__________________
If you drive like an asshole, you probably are one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MG1
punkwax, I don't care what your friends say about you, you are gold!
No big deal since most girls are growing up fatter, and when your fat ur nothing but the princess of ponchos.
So are the boys. I guess they are the Princes of Poncho.
Hmm sounds like a classic Disney movie for the new millenium fat over fed under exercised cyber reality home bound brats.
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