Peggy Orenstein: I think part of it was that I had been the supposed expert for the last 20 years, so I had 20 years of anxiety. Is having a daughter really that much more precarious than it was, say, 20 years ago? Mother Jones: You wrote that you had originally wanted a boy because you were afraid you might not be able to handle a daughter. Referring to the nearly half of six- to nine-year-old girls who wear lipstick or gloss, Orenstein tells me, “I don’t know why the percentage is not zero.” Read on for her lowdown on gender-branded diapers, Facebook’s dark side, and how the parents of preschool beauty queens are more like us than we’d care to admit. Orenstein hangs out with teachers, teenyboppers, marketing execs, social scientists, tots in tiaras, and her own seven-year-old to probe the beguiling contradictions of our growing girly-girl culture. It’s the whole onslaught.” Cinderella Ate My Daughter is a highly entertaining (and disconcerting) romp. Where do Disney princesses fall on a 1-to-10 scale of harm to a girl’s identity? How about Bratz, pink mania, Facebook? “All of this stuff seems 1, but might be 10, and you don’t really know,” says author and New York Times Magazine essayist Peggy Orenstein as we chat about her new book. From premature sexualization to the risk of depression to rising rates of narcissism, the potential negative impact of this new girlie-girl culture is undeniable-yet armed with awareness and recognition, parents can effectively counterbalance its influence in their daughters' lives.Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. The stakes turn out to be higher than she ever imagined.

or do they?In search of answers, Peggy Orenstein visited Disneyland, trolled American Girl Place, and met parents of beauty-pageant preschoolers tricked out like Vegas showgirls.

But how dangerous is pink and pretty, anyway? Being a princess is just make-believe eventually they grow out of it . . . And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as the source of female empowerment.

Sweet and sassy or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is.

Peggy Orenstein, acclaimed author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestsellers Girls & Sex and Schoolgirls, offers a radical, timely wake-up call for parents, revealing the dark side of a pretty and pink culture confronting girls at every turn as they grow into adults.

Cinderella ate my daughter