Ann Larie forwarded me this article from the New York Times Magazine on a feminist scholar/mother's struggle with her daughter's desire to be a "princess." I think this is still one of the big struggles in modern feminism between feminism as opportunity and feminism as moral imperative.  There are lots of reasons why a girl would want to be a princess, but I think it depends on what kind of princess we're talking about and what limitations are on her.  It's great to be rich and powerful and beautiful and adored, but what if you're not thin or submissive or always soothing in your tone? What if you are a strong leader who decides not to marry or decides to do political work or is a lesbian? To me, it's so hard to fight against the cultural pressure to "be a princess."  I'd rather focus on promoting positive images of other roles and other options for being one (e.g., a punk princess or a warrior princess like Xena), kind of like we've done for "mother" to some degree.  There's also all the work to be done with boys to change their conception of what a princess is.  Sure, there's a chance that boys will want to be princesses too, but the bigger picture to me is helping boys reconceptualize "princess" as a full range of humanity, including power and independence -- just as we need to allow princes to cry, be quiet, and be adored without losing our respect for them. I also think feminism sometimes suffers from an image of "taking away" things from culture and our experience rather than adding to them.  Not that there aren't things I would want to take away, but politically, it's hard to win on a message of scarcity and witholding.  (See, e.g., the fight to give women reproductive choice vs. the fight to remove pornography that exhibits violence against women).  For example, in the article, she notes that the male executive who started the new princess marketing trend was inspired because he went to a "Disney on Ice"  show and saw the crowd already filled with girls in princess dresses.  Now obviously, the market reinforces the meme to some degree, but what this tells me is that there already was a huge obsession with being a princess far before the latest consumer craze.  Of course, one of Disney's problems is that they only depict princesses as passive and submissive girls, even when characters such as Mulan and Pocahontas could have also been depicted as warriors.  (This is, of course, putting aside the racial issues with those characters being the only ones to show aggressive traits). I also think the issue is somewhat entangled in the debate over the early sexualization of children and girls and the growing targetting of young children as consumers, which the author also mentions.  Those are serious issues too. So what does this mean on a practical level?  Hard to say, especially given that I'm not a parent yet.  I guess if I were in her situation, I would chill out and let my kid enjoy indulging in the princess fantasy while providing positive reinforcement for other images and ideals, then, when they are older, talk to them about the social construction of gender as it comes up.  And maybe say something like "Princesses are powerful too, don't forget.  They get to rule kingdom's one day and tell everyone what to do."  Or "Being a princess is great, but sometimes, people don't let them do what they want because they're a girl, which sucks. So sometimes you have to ignore them and just do it anyway." I guess it also depends on the individual kid and what kind of risk you think there is that they will be weakened by the experience. I think a parent's worst nightmare is watching their kid have problems later in life and wondering in hindsight what they could have done differently to help them more.