Boys avoid it; girls rush toward it. It’s the “pink aisle,” and it can be found in toy stores and chain stores throughout the country. If a member of your family is a girl, you’ve been there. Located on this aisle are dolls, dollhouses and accessories for dolls – miniature shoes and purses, hats and even pets for the well-heeled doll that has everything.
Oh, yes – and all manner of Disney-related princess merchandise.
Until fairly recently, Disney Princess merchandise was in short supply. It wasn’t until Andy Mooney, chairman of Disney consumer products, went to Disney on Ice and found himself surrounded by all things princess: little girls dressed in princess outfits, complete with crowns and wands – a sea of Pantone Pink.
The gauzy atmosphere of the ice show was Mooney’s epiphany. Since then, more than 25,000 Disney Princess products made it onto girls’ wish lists worldwide. Sales of princess-related merchandise went from $300 million in 2001 to $3 billion in 2006.
Many of us grew up with Snow White and Cinderella. We created road trips with Barbie and her dream car, with or without Ken. How detrimental was this to our current life as adults? Are princesses and their ilk so destructive to today’s girls that they should be struck from playrooms?
In their book “Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing our Daughters from Marketers’ Schemes,” Sharon Lamb, Ed.D, and Lyn Mikel Brown, Ed.D, rake princess-hood over the coals. “Disney is the first thing we think of when people tell us that parents should simply throw away the TV.”
Lamb and Brown sort “Disney Girls” into themes. A few examples are: “Disney Girls are women with Barbie doll bodies”; “Disney Girls mother and do housework”; and “Disney girls can’t resist a mirror.”
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