For only $44 at Nordstrom, you can dress your toddler in a tank top that declares her to be a "Juicy Couture Princess" -- that is, someone whose parents can afford to buy designer shirts that will end up stained with ketchup or jelly. And until recently, numerous Saks stores maintained Club Libby Lu, a spa for 5- to 13-year-old girls offering princess makeovers with tube tops and miniskirts that left girls looking more like Real Housewives than Cinderella. The ailing retailer closed the tween operation in May, but it grossed $60 million in 2008.Heh. Whole thing.
Call it trickle-down narcissism. Today, even as the economic crisis continues, many middle-class parents aspire to give their daughters the best of everything, "the best" meaning the most expensive. A quick tour around suburbia will show princess-themed bedrooms (the rhinestoned-and-feathered kind, not the cartoon-character kind) and ostentatious birthday parties, as well as pedigreed dogs being toted in designer bags by 10-year-olds. Maintaining a diva daughter has become one more way to one-up the Joneses.
Sadly, even believing Christians are participating in the princess push. Christian retail outlets like A Different Direction carry "God's Girlz," glamour dolls dressed in princess shirts and spandex with sparkling tiaras on their heads. St. Paul may have exhorted women to be modest in their dress, but many church-going girls proudly wear Christian-marketed clothing imprinted with messages like "Yes, I am a Princess." The small print underneath -- "I'm a daughter of the King" -- is supposed to differentiate the sentiment from secular princess gear (never mind that the King's firstborn declared himself not a prince but a servant of all.)
Exit question: How does one go about praising their children while at the same time building up in them humility?
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