The little princess: empowering or emasculating?

If you have a daughter or cousin or niece in the 4 to 10 range, you've probably been introduced to the importance of princesses and the color pink. This essay recounts one feminist mother's struggle with the "princess culture" for her preschool daughter, wondering if the mass marketing of girlishness may be undermining young girl's chances to eschew stereotypical gender roles later in life. Some sneak peeks:

• When overhearing the dental hygienist offering to seat her daughter in the "princess chair" to have her teeth "sparkled," Mom replies: "Oh, for God’s sake...Do you have a princess drill, too?"
• "The issue is 25,000 Princess products," says Brown, a professor of education and human development at Colby College. "When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice: it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play."
• On the other hand, Mom also notes, "a headline-grabbing 2005 British study that revealed that girls enjoy torturing, decapitating and microwaving their Barbies nearly as much as they like to dress them up for dates. There is spice along with that sugar after all..."