Posted on 06/13/2009 7:41:59 AM PDT by reaganaut1
The princess industry has been booming in the past few years -- not just the Disney dolls and scratchy toy-store ball gowns that are a rite of passage in most American girlhoods, but a brazen new breed of princess products that target a far wider age range and tap into less seemly attitudes. The hot-pink, leopard-print princess backpacks, T-shirts, purses and bedspreads that girls are now buying (or, rather, their parents are buying for them) have little to do with indulging sweet princess fantasies and everything to do with catering to over-indulged princess egos. [Taste] Sara Schwartz
Take the popular tween retailer Justice. At malls nationwide, it carries multiple "Princess" tops and accessories that look a lot more like Paris Hilton's attire than Snow White's. No surprise that part of its marketing slogan is "Love yourself."
For only $44 at Nordstrom, you can dress your toddler in a tank top that declares her to be a "Juicy Couture Princess" -- that is, someone whose parents can afford to buy designer shirts that will end up stained with ketchup or jelly. And until recently, numerous Saks stores maintained Club Libby Lu, a spa for 5- to 13-year-old girls offering princess makeovers with tube tops and miniskirts that left girls looking more like Real Housewives than Cinderella. The ailing retailer closed the tween operation in May, but it grossed $60 million in 2008.
Call it trickle-down narcissism. Today, even as the economic crisis continues, many middle-class parents aspire to give their daughters the best of everything, "the best" meaning the most expensive. A quick tour around suburbia will show princess-themed bedrooms (the rhinestoned-and-feathered kind, not the cartoon-character kind) and ostentatious birthday parties, as well as pedigreed dogs being toted in designer bags by 10-year-olds.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I’m raising my daughter like Cinderella. She gets to dress up sometimes, but she still has to clean the house!
Yeah, isn’t it great? The men in this country have slipped badly, we are complete pussies collectively. Western Europe has an excuse for their slippage, they lost a significant percentage of their adult male population in WWII and the subsequent generations are still feeling the fallout from children being raised primarily by women and politics being driven primarily by women. America has no such excuse, which makes our situation all the more embarrassing.
My dad would say that between me and my brothers, it was like he had three sons instead of two sons and a daughter.
To my poor Ma’s despair, I had hair as straight as uncooked spaghetti and two left feet. No “Shirley Temple” here! :-)
***Please, there’ve been spoiled princesses for the past zillion years. What else is new....***
What is funny is to look at some of those so-called “princesses” of the sixties who thought they where hot s#!t back then. Today they are fat, dumpy, dowdy, wrinkled. They began to fall apart just a few years after high school graduation.
Just think, in a few years we will see fat, dumpy dowdy TATOOED old ladies everywhere. Oh wait! I saw one not long ago! White, tall, overweight, with a trash stamp of an apple on her arm. Over the apple wat the word in big letters..”BITCH”.
Just think! She was probbly one given the “princess” treatment when young.
Don’t get me started on one of my favorite topics!
These are the little witches that started tailgaiting me about 10 years ago and who are now the worst drivers on the road (that honor used to go to teenage boys).
These are the little Miley Cyrus worshipers who dress like street walkers.
Look around you and tell me who are the civilized people in our society? The men and boys are. Used to be the females.
And the irony behind all of this pedestal-putting of the females in our society is that they are still being taught that their value lies in their looks, not in their characters. Same sh*t, different decade.
Next time you get a chance, listen to the hate dripping from a lib woman's voice when they talk about "Chinese mail order brides." I for one, as a prisoner in the northeast, have pretty much lost my taste for American women. Call me a wierdo, I just don't find greed, narcisism and a compelling need to dominate a relationship to be very attractive.
It was more fun to hang out with the guys, wasn’t it? They always were planning ‘adventures’ of some kind in my neighborhood. Building forts, stilts, swings, and romping through the woods was alot more fun than having tea parties with baby dolls..lol.
I think that every girl has been “Princess” at some point. The meaning isn’t the same for everyone, though. Some people think the princess title means you have to indulge every material whim.
I may have been “princess” to my Dad (and yes, that was one of the nicknames I had up till the day he died), but I was reminded regularly that 1) the sun did not rise and set on my ass, and 2) there is not a giant *sshole in the sky that sh*ts money.
Dad was all about balance. :-)
Yep, I got Legos, Hot Wheels, footballs and baseball equip, Star Trek walkie talkies and fishing poles. The closest thing to girl I got was a Jaime Summers Bionic Woman barbie doll. Still have it.
Think real hard as to why they really married Chinese women.
>>What’s new is that for the first time in history, a country’s men have allowed those emotion-over-reason ‘princesses’ to drive the political direction of the world’s superpower. And now we deal with the consequences of that superpower falling apart as a result.<<
And don’t forget that there quite a few males who also indulge in “princessmania”. They have the “right”! here they got that right is beyond me.
dico ut telum! dico ut telum!
Yeah, my wife looked at this article and said, “so, what’s new?” In the seventies and eighties there were Calvin Klein jeans, Ferragamo high heals, and sweet sixteen parties. I am getting this all from her, as I was in PR at the time, and the culture is equally indulgent of young girls, but different culturally. People always have treated their daughters like princesses, and probably always will. Other people will say these princesses are spoiled, slutty, narcissistic and self indulgent, just like they always have.
Honestly, I sometimes wish I had the financial means to treat my daughters like princesses. But, they will have to live with only my love and the knowledge that I do the best I can for them.
It still is. Playing football and shooting guns are a lot more fun than watching Oprah or gushing over Obama while drinking overpriced wine.
Good for you! I feel sory for women trying to raise girls in today’s world. I had my neice and her daughter living with me for awhile and was horrified at the slutty barbies and Bratz dolls at the toy stores. I finally bought an old fashioned dollhouse and got my great neice involved in decorating it etc., but even that was fraught with cultural rot at times.
Soe let's make up our minds. Is there a recession or isn't there? If this exists to an extent worth talking about, where is the money coming from?
You too, huh? I think there are more of us out there than we think. ;-)
From a purely culinary aspect I could see myself being married to a Thai or Viet woman. But it’s much cheaper just to eat out when I feel an urge for that food. So be it.
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