Does this bride costume profoundly disturb anyone?

[WishboneDawn]

Wanted to reiterate how much I detest kids' marketing across the board just about. There's a big display for How to Train Your Dragon (from Dreamworks) at Wal Mart right now. Very cool--except even though one of the gang of Viking kids is a girl, there is Not. One. Item. that isn't boy marketed. Boy shoes, boy pj's, boy T-shirts...none for girls. DD did like the skateboards, and I thought the backpack with a matching lunchbox that looked like a center-grip round shield was totally cool, but...c'mon couldn't they have put the girl on ONE LOUSY SHIRT???

 

This kind of thing is a HUGE frustration for my daughter. She loves fantasy and action books/movies/etc. and would be happy to be marketed to...But no one's willing. t's all about the boys.

[Caroline]

(I should quote whoever mentioned pregnant Barbie. But, I just got home from work and I'm too lazy to go back and find it)

 

I predate Pregnant Barbie, but my Barbies definitely gave birth. I use to have The Sunshine Family dolls, which had a baby. The SF dolls were shorter than Barbies, so those dolls became teenagers and Barbie took their baby and gave birth to it. On the Barbie Ocean Liner.

 

I also had a Mrs. Beasley doll, but she never gave birth.

 

We had the Sunshine Family and The Happy Family because they were better proportioned than Barbies. We only had Skippers from the Barbie line. I have never met anyone else who had a Sunshine/Happy Family.

 

My dd5 loves to play dress up. Her birthday is in November, and each year my sister goes to the Disney Store after Halloween and buys costumes on sale. Then we pass them down to our you ger cousins when dd outgrows them. I believe right now she has on Jasmine's pants and a dress my mom made.

[LibraryLover]

We had the Sunshine Family and The Happy Family because they were better proportioned than Barbies. We only had Skippers from the Barbie line. I have never met anyone else who had a Sunshine/Happy Family.

 

My dd5 loves to play dress up. Her birthday is in November, and each year my sister goes to the Disney Store after Halloween and buys costumes on sale. Then we pass them down to our you ger cousins when dd outgrows them. I believe right now she has on Jasmine's pants and a dress my mom made.

 

The Sushine Family had a pottery studio. Squeeeee! I loved those dolls. The daddy carried the baby in front pack, too, and they had a backpack, for the baby as well. My Barbie was forever in the Barbie van with my brother's GI Joe. ;) My sisters and I also had some dolls (smaller than sunshine famiy) called Love, Peace, Flower, and Freedom. My fav one was Peace, but Flower had a floppy felt hat that was way cool. Peace had a red, white and blue pansuit.

[myfunnybunch]

We had the Sunshine Family

 

We had the Sunshine Family too! My sister and I LOVED the Grandmother. (I think there was a Grandfather too, but I think he fell down a crack in the barn floor.)

 

Cat

[lionfamily1999]

Argh! I'm still regretting the loss of a fantastic, swirly dress up skirt. It'd probably fit me perfectly now! And you know what? It was a frightening orange and brown, with braid and sequins and I would wear it everywhere if I still had it!

 

:lol:

Rosie- who really ought to make her daughter a swirly skirt

I just bought a dress this weekend, partially because of this thread :p I found this really sort of terrible yellow dress with brown flowers (think very 70s color scheme), but when I spin it flares out. Dh almost fell to pieces when he saw it. He thinks it's wonderful and horrible at the same time :lol: Dd is jealous, because I'm a mom/wife and I can wear whatever I want.

(I should quote whoever mentioned pregnant Barbie. But, I just got home from work and I'm too lazy to go back and find it)

 

I predate Pregnant Barbie, but my Barbies definitely gave birth. I use to have The Sunshine Family dolls, which had a baby. The SF dolls were shorter than Barbies, so those dolls became teenagers and Barbie took their baby and gave birth to it. On the Barbie Ocean Liner.

 

I also had a Mrs. Beasley doll, but she never gave birth.

I wanted pregnant Barbie so bad, but had to settle for the Heart Family. I do remember the ocean liner though, oh those things which dreams are made of.

[Lovthesurf]

The price is disturbing!

 

:iagree:

exactly what I was going to say!

[myfatherslily]

I'm not bothered by the dress at all, although I won't spend more than $10 on a dress-up costume myself. And I most definitely had pregnant Barbies:) I started with stuffing their bathing suits, then I moved on to making playdough molds of varying sizes! I wasn't big on pretending *I* was pregnant... but my SIL did and she's about to have her 6th child:D

 

I know people have very different points of view (even within my own family) and I respect that. So understand that it is an honest and thoughtful question when I ask what is disturbing about the Cinderella bride dress? The fact that it is a bride dress? Or because it's marketed by Disney? The design of this particular one? It is about protecting a girl's innocence or about stuffing her into stereotypical roles? I'd just like to understand your point of view:)

[sparrow]

 

I know people have very different points of view (even within my own family) and I respect that. So understand that it is an honest and thoughtful question when I ask what is disturbing about the Cinderella bride dress? The fact that it is a bride dress? Or because it's marketed by Disney? The design of this particular one? It is about protecting a girl's innocence or about stuffing her into stereotypical roles? I'd just like to understand your point of view:)

 

I keep popping into this thread to see if the OP has responded to what s/he found disturbing, but haven't seen a response. Perhaps I missed it? :bigear:

[hornblower]

Not the OP but I'll happily give my .02 about what's disturbing about it.

 

1) it's not pretend when the props are pretty much real. For me, the point of pretending is using the imagination, seeing things for something else & placing ourselves in that scene. The bedsheet is a bedsheet but could be a toga or a tent or a dress or a bandage or a superhero cape..... This? It's a wedding dress.

 

2) It continues to represent a stifling view of appropriate life goals for women. I am a feminist. I happen to be married - happily so & for almost 19 years now. But marriage is not the be all and end all for women (or men, but that seems to go without saying.) However, we continue to be surrounded by messages that marriage should be our highest ambition. One corollary is that many adult women who don't marry feel like failures. Another corollary is that girls and young women obsess too much about pleasing men and finding boyfriends and beau's instead of focusing on education, career, their greater role in society, how they can be of service to their communities, how they can utilize their gifts to the fullest potential. Life is not just about finding a spouse but you wouldn't know it from the cultural messages we receive.

 

Enough with the princesses and brides. Girls need to roleplay many other facets of being a grown up. Disney is I think pretty notorious for showing girls and women in very stereotypical roles. For me the fact that it's Disney is just a small aspect of the problem. I'd feel the same about it if it was a different manufacturer though certainly it being Disney is hardly a surprise. It's what they do.

 

3) Marriage is a wonderful institution but it's not about the dress. The commercialization of a solemn vow has got way out of control and now we're grooming little children to think that weddings mean big white dresses and worrying about appearance - instead of about whether this really is the person you will spend the rest of your life with, and whether it would be better to put this money aside for your expenses or raising a family or geee, maybe just donate it to charity instead of blowing it on a dress & wedding hoopla.

[sparrow]

Not the OP but I'll happily give my .02 about what's disturbing about it.

 

1) it's not pretend when the props are pretty much real. For me, the point of pretending is using the imagination, seeing things for something else & placing ourselves in that scene. The bedsheet is a bedsheet but could be a toga or a tent or a dress or a bandage or a superhero cape..... This? It's a wedding dress.

 

2) It continues to represent a stifling view of appropriate life goals for women. I am a feminist. I happen to be married - happily so & for almost 19 years now. But marriage is not the be all and end all for women (or men, but that seems to go without saying.) However, we continue to be surrounded by messages that marriage should be our highest ambition. One corollary is that many adult women who don't marry feel like failures. Another corollary is that girls and young women obsess too much about pleasing men and finding boyfriends and beau's instead of focusing on education, career, their greater role in society, how they can be of service to their communities, how they can utilize their gifts to the fullest potential. Life is not just about finding a spouse but you wouldn't know it from the cultural messages we receive.

 

Enough with the princesses and brides. Girls need to roleplay many other facets of being a grown up. Disney is I think pretty notorious for showing girls and women in very stereotypical roles. For me the fact that it's Disney is just a small aspect of the problem. I'd feel the same about it if it was a different manufacturer though certainly it being Disney is hardly a surprise. It's what they do.

 

3) Marriage is a wonderful institution but it's not about the dress. The commercialization of a solemn vow has got way out of control and now we're grooming little children to think that weddings mean big white dresses and worrying about appearance - instead of about whether this really is the person you will spend the rest of your life with, and whether it would be better to put this money aside for your expenses or raising a family or geee, maybe just donate it to charity instead of blowing it on a dress & wedding hoopla.

 

Still curious to hear from the OP, but you answered as I assumed s/he would.

 

Personally, I would not buy it for my dd either (her response was that it was "too white"), but I also do not read as much into princess dresses as some do.

[myfunnybunch]

Not the OP but I'll happily give my .02 about what's disturbing about it.

 

1) it's not pretend when the props are pretty much real. For me, the point of pretending is using the imagination, seeing things for something else & placing ourselves in that scene. The bedsheet is a bedsheet but could be a toga or a tent or a dress or a bandage or a superhero cape..... This? It's a wedding dress.

 

2) It continues to represent a stifling view of appropriate life goals for women. I am a feminist. I happen to be married - happily so & for almost 19 years now. But marriage is not the be all and end all for women (or men, but that seems to go without saying.) However, we continue to be surrounded by messages that marriage should be our highest ambition. One corollary is that many adult women who don't marry feel like failures. Another corollary is that girls and young women obsess too much about pleasing men and finding boyfriends and beau's instead of focusing on education, career, their greater role in society, how they can be of service to their communities, how they can utilize their gifts to the fullest potential. Life is not just about finding a spouse but you wouldn't know it from the cultural messages we receive.

 

Enough with the princesses and brides. Girls need to roleplay many other facets of being a grown up. Disney is I think pretty notorious for showing girls and women in very stereotypical roles. For me the fact that it's Disney is just a small aspect of the problem. I'd feel the same about it if it was a different manufacturer though certainly it being Disney is hardly a surprise. It's what they do.

 

3) Marriage is a wonderful institution but it's not about the dress. The commercialization of a solemn vow has got way out of control and now we're grooming little children to think that weddings mean big white dresses and worrying about appearance - instead of about whether this really is the person you will spend the rest of your life with, and whether it would be better to put this money aside for your expenses or raising a family or geee, maybe just donate it to charity instead of blowing it on a dress & wedding hoopla.

 

Hmm...I agree wholeheartedly with #1 and #3.

 

But I don't believe that playing bride means that girls are viewing marriage as their only appropriate life goal.

 

Now that I think of it, I have a qualification: If all that was in the dress-up box relates to bride/princess, I'm 100% on board with #2.

 

But when I was a girl, I played bride, cowboys, Nancy Drew, cougars, doctor...er, with the little plastic doctor kit...babies, pioneers, and cops and robbers. (Alas, the only one of those roles I've fulfilled in real life was bride. *sigh*) Our experience with our daughters and our friends' girls was the same. The boys are/were sometimes called into service to play groom, too, so marriage role-play is not limited only to girls. As long as there are a variety of dress-up materials for children to role-play many different adult (and animal and fantasy) roles, we're doing them a disservice to choose one role, bride, and say that play is disturbing or not appropriate for childhood play.

 

I don't see purchasing a bride dress, whether it's a $50 Disney dress or a $1 garage sale find, as much different than purchasing a doctor kit or cat ears or a fireman hat.

 

Cat

[hornblower]

But I don't believe that playing bride means that girls are viewing marriage as their only appropriate life goal.

 

Now that I think of it, I have a qualification: If all that was in the dress-up box relates to bride/princess, I'm 100% on board with #2.

 

Yes I agree with what you've said here & I'm pretty sure both my kids (yes, even the boy) played bride at some point. I don't have an issue with the roleplay.

 

But I also think that unless a family is very careful, even seeding the box with a variety of costumes on its own will not help - not if the child is surrounded by media and cultural messages (or comments from relatives!) about how sweet and lovely and pretty and beautiful that outfit is. I think we only need to look at the preponderance of everyday clothes with the Pretty Princess etc logos to see the powerful messaging directed at young girls.

[mirth]

Hello. OP here. I had been keeping up with most of the responses. (Last week was rough around here and I didn't have the mental stamina to get into an online squabble if things went the wrong way.) Thanks everyone for not jumping on me for having a differing initial response. The reason I asked is really because I wanted to see if I were different.

 

I found the dress disturbing in its realism, its absence of a groom costume (or even the presence of a groom in the blurry background), and something else I had a hard time putting into just a few words. So here it goes.

 

My main take is that girls are bombarded with too many conflicting messages whereas boys are not. Looking down the toy aisles at Target, the girls section have arrays of pink shopping carts, baby dolls, physically gorgeous Barbies (models, airplane pilots, doctors), toy vacuum cleaners, play make-up. The tot-sized wedding dress must've been a tipping point for me. YOU MUST TAKE CARE OF BABIES AND THE HOME AND LOOK CUTE TOO and then do whatever else like be a doctor. These are not messages not promoted to boys -- not at my Target and Walmarts anyway. If you continue to look down the aisles of real appliances, there is always a picture of a woman or woman's hand demonstrating the garment steamer, the Playtex dishwashing gloves, the baby bottle warmer. Let's not even get into haircare ads.

 

Please stay with me. This is not necessarily a rant. Recently I another paper called The Supermom Trap. It is basically a study on how women's own rating of self-confidence diminishes with the more her male spouse does with respect to babies in their house. It was probably the most (or only) insightful pieces I have ever read lending to the so-called Mommy Wars.

 

From conclusions: "For mothers, employment may represent a double-edged sword, fostering a sense of self-competence but simultaneously eroding self-competence if they perceive that their husbands are assuming the caregiver role effectively. This finding may help explain why mothers perform a much larger portion of the child care even when they are employed. Because cultural norms inspire mothers to be primary caregivers (Arendell, 2000), especially for infants, employed mothers may feel pressured to do more caregiving to ensure the survival of their feelings of self-competence, even while they may wish for fathers' increased participation to lessen their burden."

 

 

I have a married woman friend about my age who has kids about the ages of mine. She is a full-time WOHM, high-earner, and licensed professional and her husband works too. She admitted that they probably do not really need his income as it basically covers the cost of childcare for the kids. But she said she "just wouldn't feel right about it" if he were to take on the SAHD role. I puzzled over this for awhile, chalked it up to a "that's what works for them" and then came across the paper. I started to wonder how many others feel like her. If it matters, I have always gotten the feeling that she is fundamentally unhappy.

 

My point is that it'd be different if all the messages a girl got were consistent (baby dolls to real baby bottles, toy vac to real vac forever), or if there were none at all LIKE FOR BOYS. Be a superhero. Be a talking red car. Be Handy Manny. Be whatever, but Target and Disney don't try telling you that you'd had better end up a husband and dad, and that this is what it looks like.

 

Finally I concluded that even if ladies like my friend have fallen victim to all these conflicting messages, that this is something women are doing to themselves. My friend's husband is very supportive and always says nice things about here (the other way around not so much). The study said that the hubbies, no matter how much babycare they took on, always rated their working wives very highly. This negative self-confidence (as a function of someone else's actions) is something that women have just got to break out of, or own up to the fact that they are generating it in the first place. The fuel for the Mommy Wars, I feel, is this "confidence gap". I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember when baby Jessica fell down a well in Texas and there was a huge rescue attempt mostly on TV. I think the first question that popped into many people's minds was "where was her mother when this happened??" This question, not the answer, is the fuel can for what fuels the mommy wars. If there were no "confidence gap", an empty fuel can would be just that.

[lionfamily1999]

1) it's not pretend when the props are pretty much real. For me, the point of pretending is using the imagination, seeing things for something else & placing ourselves in that scene. The bedsheet is a bedsheet but could be a toga or a tent or a dress or a bandage or a superhero cape..... This? It's a wedding dress.

I do prefer for my kids to have imaginative toys (which means we've dumped a ton of toys that pretty well play themselves). I can agree with that, but I don't think it's the toys that stifle imagination so much as a lack of time. That's my opinion, obviously, but a big difference I've seen in our older ds since we started hsing and unplugged the tv. He never had time to pretend and as sad as that is, I can see the use of toys that make it easier for kids to pretend, especially those poor kids whose imaginations have been destroyed by tv and incredibly busy schedules.

2) It continues to represent a stifling view of appropriate life goals for women. I am a feminist. I happen to be married - happily so & for almost 19 years now. But marriage is not the be all and end all for women (or men, but that seems to go without saying.) However, we continue to be surrounded by messages that marriage should be our highest ambition. One corollary is that many adult women who don't marry feel like failures. Another corollary is that girls and young women obsess too much about pleasing men and finding boyfriends and beau's instead of focusing on education, career, their greater role in society, how they can be of service to their communities, how they can utilize their gifts to the fullest potential. Life is not just about finding a spouse but you wouldn't know it from the cultural messages we receive.

This really bothers me. I can believe and appreciate that a woman would want to be something besides a bride/mother/&tc. Why, then, can't someone appreciate that some women want to be one? Why would someone have to be more than what they wanted to be?

Enough with the princesses and brides. Girls need to roleplay many other facets of being a grown up. Disney is I think pretty notorious for showing girls and women in very stereotypical roles. For me the fact that it's Disney is just a small aspect of the problem. I'd feel the same about it if it was a different manufacturer though certainly it being Disney is hardly a surprise. It's what they do.

This too. Pretend is pretend. Ds pretends to be an astronaut cartoonist that is changing the world. I don't make him play realistically. I don't think that as an adult he will rue never being an astronaut cartoonist, the same way I didn't consider myself a failure because I never was a fairy princess airline stewardess.

3) Marriage is a wonderful institution but it's not about the dress. The commercialization of a solemn vow has got way out of control and now we're grooming little children to think that weddings mean big white dresses and worrying about appearance - instead of about whether this really is the person you will spend the rest of your life with, and whether it would be better to put this money aside for your expenses or raising a family or geee, maybe just donate it to charity instead of blowing it on a dress & wedding hoopla.

It's always been like this though (or at least much longer than just recently. My grandmother used to play with bride dolls. My great-grandmother on the other side made cornhusk bride dolls. Crazy enough, neither one ever had a big wedding, just simple ceremonies, just like me :D I loved playing at a wedding, but never really cared about the wedding itself, dh was the one that insisted on a ceremony.

 

My main take is that girls are bombarded with too many conflicting messages whereas boys are not.

 

From conclusions: "For mothers, employment may represent a double-edged sword, fostering a sense of self-competence but simultaneously eroding self-competence if they perceive that their husbands are assuming the caregiver role effectively. This finding may help explain why mothers perform a much larger portion of the child care even when they are employed. Because cultural norms inspire mothers to be primary caregivers (Arendell, 2000), especially for infants, employed mothers may feel pressured to do more caregiving to ensure the survival of their feelings of self-competence, even while they may wish for fathers' increased participation to lessen their burden."

 

This question, not the answer, is the fuel can for what fuels the mommy wars. If there were no "confidence gap", an empty fuel can would be just that.

:iagree: I do think the drive to make girls be everything and be it better than anyone else DOES cause a lot of harm. I didn't read all that in the bride dress, but I agree with everything it put into your head :p

 

I will say, as far as boys go, it's incredibly irritating that I cannot find things like dollhouses, vaccuums, &tc. that are not pink. My boys love "helping," but the toys available limit them to pretending to help fix "manly" things and that drives me nuts. As much as girls are being stretched to the breaking point (you should make the money, the kids, the house a home, your husband happy, your face and body pretty, &tc) boys, imo, are being so limited. My kids love playing house, but finding a nice gender neutral (like realistic) house for them to play with is (without blowing out the bank account) well nigh impossible. They like to sew, but finding simple kid kits that aren't covered in flowers and butterflies is like trying to find Big Foot.

[TracyR]

No. Actually to me it looks more like a first communion outfit than a wedding dress.

 

My girls had a wedding dress in their dress up clothes at Nan's house. She waited until she found one second hand for under $30. It was an actual wedding dress.

:iagree: That's what I thought myself when I saw it.

I don't find it creepy in the least. My girls love to play dress up. Now I would never pay that much for a dress up outfit though.

My girls have been princesses, cheerleaders(tasteful outfit of course), teachers, doctors. In all honesty I think they've pretended to be quite a bit.