{"id":17742,"date":"2012-07-11T23:21:43","date_gmt":"2012-07-12T04:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=17742"},"modified":"2012-07-11T23:30:12","modified_gmt":"2012-07-12T04:30:12","slug":"and-the-princess-lived-happily-ever-after-as-a-lawyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2012\/07\/and-the-princess-lived-happily-ever-after-as-a-lawyer\/","title":{"rendered":"And the Princess Lived Happily Ever After as a Lawyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I just finished reading Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As clich\u00e9d as it sounds, children\u2019s things just seem different from when I was growing up. Toys, tennis rackets, toothbrushes, everything, it seems, can be purchased in girl or boy specific colors and styles today.<\/p>\n

The premise of the book validated my observations. Children are at the center of a huge marketing scheme aimed at getting parents to buy more. How is it done?<\/p>\n

The author, Peggy Orenstein, explains that segmenting the children\u2019s market causes people to think they should purchase separately at each level of a child’s development, or for each gender. The concept of \u201cthe toddler\u201d is an example. Orenstein \u201cassumed that phase was something experts\u2014people with PhDs at the very least\u2014developed after years of research into children\u2019s behavior.”\u00a0 (36) \u00a0Her assumption was wrong.<\/p>\n

Instead, it \u201c[t]urns out, according to Daniel Cook, a historian of childhood consumerism, it was popularized as a marketing gimmick by clothing manufacturers in the 1930s.\u201d (36)<\/p>\n

And, what\u2019s more, \u201c[i]t was only after<\/em> \u2018toddler\u2019 became common shoppers\u2019 parlance that it evolved into a broadly accepted developmental stage.\u201d (36)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Enter the princess market. The princess market was developed by a savvy strategist at Disney named Andy Mooney in 2000.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

[A]bout a month into his tenure [at Disney], he had flown to Phoenix to check out a \u2018Disney on Ice\u2019 show and found himself surrounded by little girls in princess costumes. Princess costumes that were\u2014horrors!\u2014homemade<\/em>. How had such a massive branding opportunity been overlooked? The very next day he called together his team and they began working on what would become known in-house as \u2018Princess.\u2019 (13)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Within one year, princess gear sales\u00a0were at $300 million. (14)<\/p>\n

Orenstein interviewed Mooney, and his comment\u00a0made me pause: \u201c\u2019I see girls expanding their imagination through visualizing themselves as princesses, and then they pass through that phase and end up becoming lawyers<\/em>, doctors, mothers, or princesses, whatever the case may be.\u2019\u201d (Emphasis added.) (16)<\/p>\n

How can Mooney be so sure that these girls will end up becoming lawyers or other professionals? After all, the fad started a mere 12 years ago, so the first wave of girls is just finishing high school and starting college.<\/p>\n

It seems to me that Mooney is making a huge assumption about the impact, or lack of one, that this fad may be having on both girls and boys. While it\u2019s entirely possible that he\u2019s right, that it may have no impact at all, or that it may actually have a positive impact, what if he\u2019s wrong? What if girls growing up heavily influenced by the princess fad never explore, or fail to explore sufficiently, less gender stereotyped roles for themselves? And, what effect will this fad have on boys\u2019 perceptions of gender in the workplace?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just finished reading Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. As clich\u00e9d as it sounds, children\u2019s things just seem different from when I was growing up. Toys, tennis rackets, toothbrushes, everything, it seems, can be purchased in girl or boy specific colors and styles today. The premise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,37,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","category-popular-culture-and-law","category-public","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}