I just got finished reading my daughter her bedtime stories. Tonight she wanted to read a couple of short board books from a Disney Princess set she has. (I’ll let Pattie grumble about the marketing bonanza that is the Disney Princess brand, but anyway.) All of the stories in thsi set are supposed to have little lessons about being a good person, and hey, I can understand the idea there. But there is something that bugs me about the tone of these books. In one of them, Jasmine goes to the market to buy herself a necklace, but decides to spend her money on a new hat for Aladdin because making someone else happy is supposed to be more important. Now given that Jasmine and Aladdin are the princess and prince of the realm, I’m thinkin’ Jasmine could have struck a bit of a two for one deal with the merchant, or at least bought on credit, but I really shouldn’t be nitpicking the plots of children’s books. That much, anyway. The thing that bugs me is the whole woman-sacrifices-her-own-interests-to-please-her-man implication, and maybe I shouldn’t be imposing gender politics on a Disney book . . . but given the aforementioned prevalence of the brand, if I’m not going to impose gender politics on a Disney book, what good are gender politics?
The whole set is full of this stuff. Cinderella teaches the mice proper etiquette. Ariel learns not to go too far away from home because it’s dangerous out there. Belle spends so much time reading that she doesn’t help her father with an experiment and the experiment goes badly. (Why didn’t Belle’s father go and get Belle?) At least Snow White teaches the dwarfs to pick up after themselves.
I dunno. Gimme Dora the Exporer any day. And not just because Dora has access to a chocolate tree.