"Cinderella Ate My Daughter": A Conversation with Peggy Orenstein

Join Mitch Bostian, Head of The Berkeley School, in conversation with Peggy Orenstein about her newly-released book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture.

As a mom herself, Orenstein was tempted to give the new culture of pink and pretty a pass. So her daughter swanned around in a Cinderella gown for a few years. Girls will be girls, right?

They will -- and that’s why we need to pay more, rather than less, attention to their world. According to the American Psychological Association, the ever-earlier emphasis on beauty and play-sexiness increases girls’ vulnerability to negative body image, depression, risky sexual behavior, and eating disorders. Yet nearly half of six year old girls now use lip gloss. The percentage of 8-12 year olds wearing eyeliner has doubled since 2008. Meanwhile, “girliness” has become a gigantic business: The Disney Princesses alone earn four billion dollars annually.

Orenstein traces a line from Cinderella’s “innocence,” to Miley Cyrus’ struggle to “age up,” to how regular girls present themselves on Facebook. Even as new educational and professional opportunities unfurl before our daughters, she argues, so does the path that encourages them to equate identity with image, self-expression with appearance, femininity with performance, pleasure with pleasing, and sexuality with sexualization.

This event will be of profound relevance to anyone interested in how to help girls navigate the road to adulthood while preserving their essential selves.