23 January 2013

Learning to be a princess, or what?


Going on with the (critical) princess-talk, here we have the ground-breaking US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor giving career advice on Sesame Street.

While we are most grateful to Sesame Street for giving conscious life-lessons to smaller people, the question to what to do with "girl sections" recognizable from afar by the bright pink and all the other consumer goods that princessize people remains.

Do you assume that the best way to limit their influence is to forbid or to be "optimistic, perhaps overly so, about our daughters' ability to leave the less healthy lessons of princess culture behind as they age," accepting that "the risk in fighting an (almost inevitably unsuccessful) battle against princess culture is the false hope it gives that a de-Disneyed daughter will be a more empowered one" as Hugo Schwyzer does?

(This is not only about small children. Feel free, go on and recount all the wacky ideas about love, friendship, good, beauty and hair that Disney has planted in your own head...)

And as a piece of advice to bigger girls, here is Elizabeth Wurtzel with her own very sober career advice:
"Somewhere between childbirth and a no-fault divorce, a lot of smart women have chosen to engage in some risky behavior. Opting out is not a feminist choice. It's mostly just a bad idea." 

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