With that being said, my inner Girlie Girl cannot help but love all the princess stuff, at least for now. It's cute, and for a 4 year old, it truly is innocent. She loves the pretty dresses and sparkly things (I still love sparkly things!!), and thankfully hasn't requested a Ken doll for herself yet (she saw one at Target and thought her brother needed it). I don't see her pining over the lifestyle of a princess, but she does love to run around in her Ariel costume and plastic high heels. Thankfully she is mostly pretending to be a Mommy. If she is still doing this with seriousness when she is 10, then I'm going to have to call in the big guns for some kind of princess shock therapy.
Little girls will be little girls, and as long as their strong female role models are not sitting around trying to fit a glass slipper on their foot, they will most likely strive for something greater than sitting around waiting for some non-existent ideal prince of a man (sure William has some annoying habits that Kate can't stand . . .). My daughter strikes me as a strong willed little girl who won't settle for anything less than doing what she puts her mind to. And so in the meantime we are going to enjoy the Princesses, the pink, the purple, the tiaras and the sparkles because soon enough she is going to be an emotional teenager trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. And when that happens, I'm sure I will long for the days when she pranced around in her princess dress and nothing made her happier than Barbies and plastic heels.