I was honored when my two young nieces shared their favorite toy with me, a figurine of Princess Cadance (a unicorn from the My Little Pony stories) that flaps her wings and talks. And I was horrified when I heard the three things that she says in an endless loop: “I’m happy because I’m getting married today!”, “My dress is soooo pretty!”, and, finally, after a giggle fit, “Everybody, it’s time to dance now!”, at which point she plays a disco song and flashes bright lights. Each time the music started my nieces squealed and bounced around her. This figure is a cunning mash-up of all the things that little girls love: horses, unicorns, princesses, tiaras, pink, purple, rainbows and sparkles. Its less like a toy than a sociologically engineered composite.
The unicorn’s chatter is mindlessly girlish, and I wondered how this was shaping my nieces’ unformed, agile young minds. I remember when I was young my mother, to her great credit and my great annoyance, refused to buy me a Barbie doll, not because she was a feminist, but because she thought the doll was ridiculous. Princess Cadence, a six-inch-high electrified pink plastic unicorn, is also ridiculous. She has none of the surreal animal grace of a unicorn; she’s a cartoon. I ended up acquiring a hand-me-down Barbie doll, and also a banged-up blonde Barbie styling head, from a sympathetic babysitter. I can reveal here that I enjoyed them heartily, and also that they did nothing to shape my ideas about what a woman should look like and how a woman should behave. Similarly, I’m confident that when my two nieces finally grow tired of playing with Princess Cadance, they will remember little of what she said.