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A review by livpasquarelli
Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
Overall, this book had a big impact on me. It was full of insight and I appreciate the author‘s vulnerability in sharing her own uncertainty and perceived misgivings when it comes to raising a daughter.
My qualm with the book was the way the author referred to certain women and girls, her sarcasm, the cutting words she used. In that way, the book shows it’s age. For example, the way she refers to celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears is unforgiving, as if it were their choices to become the poster girls of sexuality that isn’t felt, but exists to be performative to others. She addresses the issues women these women face with eating disorders, mental illness, and drug abuse as a punchline instead of the reasons they struggle.
When she discusses her friends daughter, who she claims is chubby (use the word fat people! Please!), I felt a distinct bristling. She talks about how life will be harder for that girl, how she feels secretly happy that her own daughter is naturally thin. I feel it more productive to discuss how to teach our daughters that their bodies are not the most important thing about them. The world is cruel to fat people, but teaching our children that the size of our bodies does not define our worth combats the problem at its source, instead of lamenting a perceived unavoidable and unchanging situation.
I think if this book were to be written again today, the author might have more insight on a new wave of feminism that is less concerned with pink fairy dolls as inherently wrong and more concerned with pink fairy dolls of all races and sizes who can also be biochemists. Or strippers. Both valid professions.
That being said, the book is about how girls are socialized by the toys and media they consume as children, and her points about this are valid and complex. When it comes to criticism of other women, her tongue could be less sharp.
My qualm with the book was the way the author referred to certain women and girls, her sarcasm, the cutting words she used. In that way, the book shows it’s age. For example, the way she refers to celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears is unforgiving, as if it were their choices to become the poster girls of sexuality that isn’t felt, but exists to be performative to others. She addresses the issues women these women face with eating disorders, mental illness, and drug abuse as a punchline instead of the reasons they struggle.
When she discusses her friends daughter, who she claims is chubby (use the word fat people! Please!), I felt a distinct bristling. She talks about how life will be harder for that girl, how she feels secretly happy that her own daughter is naturally thin. I feel it more productive to discuss how to teach our daughters that their bodies are not the most important thing about them. The world is cruel to fat people, but teaching our children that the size of our bodies does not define our worth combats the problem at its source, instead of lamenting a perceived unavoidable and unchanging situation.
I think if this book were to be written again today, the author might have more insight on a new wave of feminism that is less concerned with pink fairy dolls as inherently wrong and more concerned with pink fairy dolls of all races and sizes who can also be biochemists. Or strippers. Both valid professions.
That being said, the book is about how girls are socialized by the toys and media they consume as children, and her points about this are valid and complex. When it comes to criticism of other women, her tongue could be less sharp.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism and Misogyny