« A random party shuffle playlist for writing on a Sunday evening
“Live from New York…My supporters are racist!” »

Sun Tzu and Cinderella

My latest column, The Princess Problem: “There’s More Than One Way of Being Pretty”, is up over at AntiRacistParent.  Toot-toot.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 7:37 am and is filed under Books and Writers, Cool Stuff, Mama-hood, Offspring, Race Matters, Toot-Toot, Wordsmithin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

11 Responses to “Sun Tzu and Cinderella”

  1. goldengraham Says:
    May 12th, 2008 at 3:04 pm

    Wow! I swear sometimes it is like you are speaking my mind. Your column about mothers and this one are so…ON (like everything else you write)!!! I have a 10 yr. old daughter and she isn’t into the princess-ology. I have the same “don’t ask” policy about the Disney princesses because they don’t look like my beautiful, brown daughter. It is amazing how some folks don’t understand my vigilance (I like to think of it as commitment) to instilling positive images of beauty in my daughter’s mind. Kudos to you!

  2. Christina Springer Says:
    May 12th, 2008 at 6:58 pm

    Deesha, Deesha, Deesha! We should stop reading each other. It’s getting expensive. I love Grace! Thank you! Thank you!

    As you know, my son has gotten me to buy 3 of the six Disney dresses. I could barely put a photo album together for his Grandmother because it was hard to find pictures of him not in a dress. So - you know it’s really bad out there when they’ve even got boys begging for the dresses.

    Great article!

  3. deesha Says:
    May 12th, 2008 at 7:34 pm

    Golden:

    I’m glad it resonates! I keep waiting for someone to show up at ARP and say that it’s all innocent fun. Or better yet, cry “reverse racism!” ;-)

  4. deesha Says:
    May 12th, 2008 at 8:13 pm

    Christina:

    Let’s say we do a book swap???

    And don’t buy another princess dress. BabyGirl got two as birthday gifts last year; we can swap those too.

  5. Christina Springer Says:
    May 12th, 2008 at 8:38 pm

    Sounds good! We have Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. What did you get?

    As to books - haven’t you read that a child’s long term wealth is oft times indicated by the number of books in their house? Winston is reading books I’d set aside for “grands” when Imani outgrew them. We are passing down inherited wealth.

    BTW - when are we getting these kids together?

  6. deesha Says:
    May 12th, 2008 at 8:44 pm

    **BTW - when are we getting these kids together?**

    I almost tacked that onto my last comment, lol!

    I believe we just have generic princess dresses. Or maybe they are specific, and I just don’t look at them that closely…

    About books and wealth…apparently I’m raising Oprah II and Oprah III!

  7. Shaping Youth Says:
    May 13th, 2008 at 12:13 am

    Hey, Deesha, we’re following each other, I just posted behind you on Lisa’s blog at Parents for Ethical Marketing! (she’s another gal pal of mine) Thanks for the permissions to cross-post on Shaping Youth, do I need any ‘lag time’ from Carmen at ARP policy-wise? (e.g. On Eco-Child’s Play it’s five days, etc.) or is it cool to just go ahead and snag it?

    If it’s the latter, could you send me a simple (thumbnail/jpeg)of you and mini-bio? I’m big on guest editorial attribution…(those bylines COUNT; I want to nourish great writers and expose as much as possible on these topics!) Thanks so much for your great post.

    p.s. May I ask in advance for Shaping Youth to have you cover ‘The Frog Princess’ next season? I’ll bet you’ll have quite the analysis! :-) Sure feel fortunate to have found you, —best, Amy

  8. deesha Says:
    May 13th, 2008 at 12:38 pm

    Amy, I’ll let you know what Carmen says about the lag. And I’d be happy to cover “The Frog Princess” (though I hear the name has been changed to “The Princess and the Frog”–seems there was all sorts of rumor, leak, and palace intrigue (pun unintended) after this flick was announced). If I could cross-post with ARP that would be great.

    So glad to cyber-meet you!

  9. Wendy Says:
    May 13th, 2008 at 5:23 pm

    Hey, you know that I’m all about owning my inner princess! So let the li’l ladies know that they’re all the princess they need to be, just as they are!

  10. deesha Says:
    May 13th, 2008 at 6:02 pm

    @ La Vrai Princessa:

    Merci!

  11. the obenson report Says:
    May 21st, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    Umm… yeah, what everybody said… took the words right out of my mind :o)

Leave a Reply