When I wrote the initial New York Times story about princesses, I was concerned that maybe by the time the book came out it wouldn't be as relevant. It seems that even for a veteran on the subject of girls, you were blindsided by a lot of what you encountered out there with your own kid. I just want to tell parents what's happening out there, so they understand what's going on with that 21-piece Disney princess makeup set. Parenting is very much in the moment, and we make a lot of our choices on the fly. Even the title of the book is supposed to let you know I don't have all the answers. I've tried to be very honest and personal in my writing, and not distance myself as an 'expert.' When you read Simone de Beauvoir, knowing that in her personal life she made some foolish choices, don't you wish that was in her work? I'm very much a fellow traveler on the journey. I didn't want another book out there to make parents feel bad about themselves. One of the things that really distinguishes your book from so many others out there is that you manage to talk frankly about the pitfalls of raising girls right now without scolding parents. It's a gripping, hilariously horrifying account of battling for your child's soul in the toy aisle, one that excoriates consumer culture while sympathizing with parents trying to make sense of it all.Īs a mother of two young Barbie-loving daughters myself, I was riveted by Orenstein's blend of self-deprecation and outrage - and eager to talk to her during the New York City leg of her book tour about baby princesses, the insidiousness of pink and, of course, Hannah Montana. In her books the best-selling author has explored the minds of 'Schoolgirls' and the feminist state of 'Flux.' But in her already much-praised new book ' Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture,' the mother of 7-year-old daughter Daisy investigates firsthand the market domination of princesses and pink, the slutification of tweens, and how social networking became the favored tool of a new generation of Mean Girls.

Peggy Orenstein has been writing about girls and women's issues since the 1980s.

Nothing can quite rock a woman's worldview like navigating through the New Girl Order with her own offspring.

Cinderella ate my daughter