Beth’s blog is The Expatriate’s Kitchen, “Musings on food and life, with my original recipes, and a cynical wit as sharp as my ten-inch French knife”.

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I’ve done my best to keep the Disney Princess invasion at bay. We have none of the movies or, uh, “books” which are just ads for the movies, and none of the merchandise or apparel or personal care items that feature the Royal Threat. Except. We do have one Disney Princess ball. No, not the kind with music and party dresses. The kind you can kick.

It was an Easter egg hunt prize, and as hard as I try to “lose” it, it keeps getting found. Lately, my preschooler has taken to asking me what each princess is named.

“Mommy, who’s that?”

“Snow White.”

“Oh, she’s pretty. Who’s this?”

“Sleeping Beauty.”

“Sleeping Booty?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Not one of my mom friends is a fan of the Princess Pack. Some helpless woman, lying around, waiting on the man to rescue her just doesn’t cut it for a role model. And, yet, all of us with girls around the ages of three to six are facing the fascination our daughters have with all things pink, fluffy and Disney.

Where does this come from, this whole princess thing we work so hard to shut out? In the beginning — just like all the colds, stomach flu and communicable diseases — they get it from their friends. As an observer-type, I’ve also noticed a strong correlation between the onset of the princess phase and the first bout of backtalk and experiments with “We don’t like (this girl) …” and other irritating behaviors associated with girlhood. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Rapunzel may have been shut away in that tower for good reason. By her real mother.

The best thing about this whole phase is that it is normal and temporary. But for Disney, the phase is like money in the bank. For at least three years of each young American girl’s life, Disney can count on raking in some bucks. It’s a marketer’s dream, the sure payout.

It is not, however, quite like hitting the lottery. That title belongs to Disney properties like Cars, a movie released several years back that is selling more merchandise now than when the film was first released. So successful is this particular property, that it will be given it’s own theme park.

The thing is, the movie doesn’t even have to be great, as long as the merchandise and concept take hold in kids’ minds. Ratatouille won an Oscar, but cookbooks and cooking tools aren’t exactly high-demand items. Don’t expect a Remy theme park or even a video game anytime soon.

It works like this, after the release of a movie — with the minimal amount of merchandise on hand — Disney looks at the audience response and the likelihood of the “property” being successful across all of their businesses. This is everything from apparel and toys and consumer packaged goods to books, food, breakfast cereals (note, these were NOT included in food), video games, spin-offs, television, DVD release, online properties, amusement parks, events, live shows on- or off-ice … and so forth until the cash registers ring eternal with your child as their golden instrument.

And, that’s what gets me most. I could handle the princess years easier if it were just entertainment; a few fairy tales, or a DVD on a rainy night and a one-time Halloween costume at most. It’s gone way past entertainment into a new kind of advertising scheme where the movie is just a sales tool, a great big entertaining commercial that fuels demand for merchandise — merchandise that fills every aisle of the store because the branded character is used as a shill on every shelf. There is no escape as the crush of marketing permeates even the most princess-proof home. And that, most of all, is a royal pain in the butt.

Stock Photo © Maureen Rigdon | Dreamstime.com

40,000 television commercials a year. That’s what the average American child sees. That’s around 100 ads for every 4 hours of television.

What’s that, you say? No TV in your house? Oh, but your kids will still see plenty of ads. There’s online adver-gaming. There are ads on school buses. Ads in the classroom. There’s product placement in movies. Not to mention billboards, posters, textbook covers, …it’s all fair game.

Week 3 of the Healthy Children, Healthy Planet series, the 7-part parenting discussion course from the Northwest Earth Institute, was all about ads. Namely, the pervasiveness of ads in our children’s lives, and whether it is even possible to create ad-free spaces in their lives.

What’s clear is that advertising is different in both quantity and quality than it’s ever been before. The amount of money spent on marketing to children — $2 billion annually — is close to 10 times greater than it was even in 1990. And the nature of it has changed, too — mostly, because there’s no place safe from it. Not schools. Not movies. Not even your daughter’s sleepover party.

Why does it matter if your kid gets bombarded with ads? It matters, because research shows that ads make your child unhealthy. They also make your child unhappy. And they weaken families by creating a wedge between parents and children (let’s pause to reflect on the fact that advertisers claim that it’s parental responsibility to protect their children from, say, junk food, the most heavily advertised product, even while advertisers try at every turn to undermine parental authority. Oh, don’t get me started).

What can a parent do about it, though? Some say we should ban advertising to children altogether, as has been done in Sweden. But short of that, there’s no single, simple solution.

Turn off the TV. Sure, that’s a good start. But it’s only a start. Limit computer time. Get involved with your schools so you know what’s being advertised there, and by whom. Teach your children about what ads are, how they work, what strategies advertisers use, and how the ads make your children feel. Others have tried that strategy, and found it worked. And there’s another thing we can do: spend a little more time with the kids, away from the media — out of doors, or reading together, maybe — helping them discover the stuff that matters.

The conversation brought me back to one I’d had that morning, as I was driving my daughter to school. She’d asked about these “parent meetings” I’d been attending. She’d wanted to know what we talked about.

“Well, today we’re talking about advertisements.”

“What’s the matter with advertisements?”

“Well…” I paused. “Remember last summer?” I asked. “When you caught that frog, the one you named Tony?” I wasn’t sure if she’d remembered, but I remembered it well. We’d spent a week at a cottage by a lake, and she’d spent hours digging around in the reeds, looking for snakes and water bugs. One afternoon, she caught a frog, and was absolutely thrilled. She named him Tony, and she whispered to him, and studied him closely, wonder in her eyes.

Then, when it was time, she let him go, watching him hop toward the water.

Sitting in the car now, she exclaimed “Tony! He was the best frog ever!”

“Right. He was. And the problem with ads is that they make you think that products like Barbie dolls are really important. But they’re not. They just take you away from the really fun things…things like catching Tony.”

She smiled, and I could tell she was thinking about that week, the one with fresh lake water, and canoes, and tiny fish that nibbled her toes if she stood still, and lakeside blueberries fresh from the bush….and in the midst of all, a beautiful bright green frog named Tony.

“I get it, Mom.” For that moment, at least, she did.

We’ve got plenty more talking to do as time goes on. But at least the conversation’s started.

Related posts:
Healthy Children, Healthy Planet Week One

Consumerism vs. Family Ritual: Healthy Children, Healthy Planet 2

There are plenty of other times, however, that I feel like I’m not like any other parent I know. We restrict television to some carefully-chosen videos. My kids have never walked through the door of a McDonald’s, and they still have no idea what a Happy Meal is. They don’t use the computer. I regularly weed out the many Disney princess products that are given as gifts, crossing my fingers that my daughter won’t notice a toy’s sudden absence (she usually doesn’t).

What’s my problem? other parents sometimes ask. What’s the big deal?

To me, the big deal is this: there’s just something that feels wrong marketing products — most of them bad for kids — to children who are too young to understand what an advertisement is. There’s something offensive about turning a child into a consumer.

That’s why I was excited when I got an email from a fellow parent inviting me to participate in Healthy Children, Healthy Planet, a 7-part class series from the Northwest Earth Institute.

Healthy Children, Healthy Planet is designed as a reading and discussion group that examines the pervasive effects of advertising, media, and how our consumer culture can influence a child’s view of the world. Along the way, it promises to discover ways to create meaningful family times and healthful environments for children, to explore ways to develop a child’s connection to nature, and to foster creativity.

Every participant is given a workbook with readings and some questions to think about. Then, each week, we come together and talk. It sounds kind of Koombayah, but the truth is, the readings are insightful and thought-provoking — like whether or not parents deserve a Parental Bill of Rights to protect their kids from commercial influences, and how we, as parents, can stop modeling consumerism to our kids (because yeah, most of us do).— and our first week’s discussion was grounded and practical.

Here is the best thing about the program, though — the very, very best thing: When you do it, you will find others like yourself. You’ll find that others are wrestling with some of the same pressures — from a 12-year-old child begging for a cell phone, to a 5-year old that begs for candy in her lunchbox so she can be “like all the other kids,” to the discomfort we feel when we see little girls embracing doe-eyed, blatantly sexual Bratz dolls.

You’ll start to be aware of certain trends, too: movies that invariably show parents as fools and children as the wise ones (a message that surely undermines a parent’s authority). Or the expectation that children should be separated from parents nearly all the time — whether it’s through large finished basements filled with toys and utterly distinct from the “adult” places in the home, or through the endless stream dance classes and swimming lessons and science school and soccer practices that keep us from meaningful family time.

For the first time, perhaps, you’ll start to see some of your own struggles not as conflict between you and your child, but as a larger fight. And you won’t feel nearly as alone.

If Week One was any indication, it’s going to be a fantastic program. The Northwest Earth Institute offers other discussion guides, as well — Voluntary Simplicity, Choices for Sustainable Living, Exploring Deep Ecology, Discovering a Sense of Place, Globalization and Its Critics, Global Warming: Changing CO2urse. All courses are designed for small groups.