I was not unlike many Mom's today; tired, hung-over from too much sugar and left wondering why, oh why, my daughter choose to be a princess for Halloween.
Now please don't misunderstand me, I am not disappointed in my daughter, but I am disappointed in what the perception of being a "pretty little princess" means to her and her female counterparts.
Okay, she's three years old, counterparts is bit much...
One might say "Oh, that's just a phase all little girls go through..."
Is it, or do we put them through it?
The fact is, I work with female executives everyday who are in the corporate battlefields of pink and blue. Women who are constantly working harder, stronger and longer in hopes of gaining membership into "the boys club" not because they actually want membership, but they want respect (and to make the same money as their male counterparts - it works here.....) Yet, from the very beginning, we dress our girls in flowers and frills and our boys in blue and superman capes and wonder why a confidence gap (and title and salary gap) are so apparent later on in life.
Have we done this to ourselves, or have our parents, and now our wants as parents for our little girls to be "sugar and spice and everything nice" doomed them to never get the corner office?
Statistics from Catalyst tell us that only 14.4% of Executive Officer positions are held by women.
And my guess is none of them look like Barbie....
Peggy Orenstein is a journalist, author and mother of a little girl. Orenstein has built her career on examining issues of lack of self esteem in adolescent girls (Schoolgirls,) the impossible decisions a women needs to make in order to have a family and a career (Flux) and more recently her research into the "princess mania" her commentary on what she calls "the new girlie-girl culture" in Cinderella Ate My Daughter.
She references a 2006 survey of more than 2,000 school aged girls. She states their repeated desire to be "perfect; to get straight A's, be student body president, editor of the newspaper, and captain of the swim team but also to be "kind and caring...." "Instead of feeling greater latitude and choice in how to be female - which is what one would hope - they now feel they must not only "have it all" but be it all. Cinderella and Supergirl. Aggressive and agreeable. Smart and stunning. Does that make them the beneficiaries of new opportunities or victims of a massive con job?"
Listen, marketing works on me, so I understand intimately the mass machine that is marketing.
My only question is why isn't there more costumes of Betty Friedman, Gloria Steinman or Sojourner Truth?
Well, maybe next year...
Best,
Shoana
