The Perfect Woman In James Poniewozik's The Princess Paradox '

If asked to think of one’s perfect idea of a woman many might say beautiful, motherly, and ambitious. Two main parts of this idea of perfection have always been prominent in society, beautiful and motherly. The idea that an ideal woman is ambitious is new to today's society. Women in today’s world feel pressured to uphold their perfect reputation that has been expected of them for centuries. The influence of today’s media has begun to imprint the idea of the perfect woman in the minds of young girls making them believe that they must make sacrifices to please others. In the movie Legally Blonde, main character Elle Woods throws herself out of her comfort zone in order to prove herself. This implies that women feel that they must conform to

an out of date lifestyle, while also fulfilling the expectations given to them by modern society. Young girls feel that if they don’t look a certain way or act a certain way, they will be judged and be undesirable. Young women are influenced to be beautiful, successful, and bear children because of media in today’s society.
In today’s society, princesses and beauty can be found on many TV channels, websites, or in books. In the book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein, she explains that teaching and raising your daughter to believe that she is beautiful for who she is is a difficult challenge that many mothers and fathers face. This insinuates that many parents feel that their daughters are being brainwashed to believe that having makeup and fancy dresses is the face of beauty. She says, “I was committed to raising her without a sense of limits: I wanted her to believe neither that some behavior or toy or profession was not for her sex nor that it was mandatory for her sex”(2 Orenstein). This explains how Orenstein feels about today’s society revolving around gender. Orenstein implies that it is a common belief that young girls must wear pink, like princesses, and like makeup and on the other hand, can not dress in comfortable clothes or boy clothes. The definition of beauty is “a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight”(Beautiful). This definition of beauty might cause young girls to change themselves in order to be liked. The television show Toddlers and Tiaras on TLC is another contributor to the idea of perfection portrayed in the media. The show produces episodes of real-life little girls being made to look like grown women and be judged for their appearance. On the show, some girls are being subjected to this life of princess obsession before they can walk or talk. This show implies that young girls should want to be pretty and should want to look like princesses. This show could make little girls feel wrong for playing with boys at recess, for having crooked teeth, and for having imperfect hair. If a young girl is watching this at home, she could immediately begin to nitpick every imperfection of herself even at a very young age. Implications of Toddlers and Tiaras are that it is just expected of a little girl to be pretty, and if she is not naturally pretty in society’s eyes then she needs to wear makeup, curl her hair, and wear expensive and provocative clothes in order to be a true girl. In the article, “The Princess Paradox” by James Poniewozik, he talks about the effect of the obsession with princesses in today’s world. Poniewozik expresses that the obsession leads to young girls being obsessed with self-image. He also implies that although beauty is important, it is not enough on its own anymore. Beauty and brains are now the requirements. In the article “Cinderella and Princess Culture”, author Peggy Orenstein would strongly disagree with the idea behind many media aspects such as the previously mentioned TV show Toddlers and Tiaras. Orenstein feels that young girls are being exposed to the wrong ideas because of the ‘princess craze’. She says, “More to the point, when my own girl makes her daily beeline for the dress-up corner of her preschool classroom--something I’m convinced she does largely to torture me--I worry about what playing Little Mermaid is teaching her”(1 Orenstein). She is hinting at the fact that princesses promote obsessing over beauty and self-image. Orenstein implies that being pretty and princess-like is the number one goal of a young girl, which could lead to insecurities later in life.
Although it is highly expected for a young girl to be pretty, in today’s world she must also be smart.

In the article, “The Princess Paradox” by James Poniewozik, he explains that beauty is just not enough anymore for a woman to be considered desirable. Poniewozik says “But to succeed on both the feminist and the fantasy level, the new Cinderella has developed rules and conventions as strict as a Joseph Campbell template.* She should be pretty, but in a class-president way, not a head-cheerleader way”(Poniewozik). This implies that being smart is now just as important as being pretty. Girls in today’s society are expected to be ambitious. They are expected to get good grades and go on to a job that they know they can do perfectly. In today’s society, girls feel that they need to prove themselves. They feel inadequate when they are not smart. In the movie Legally Blonde directed by Robert Luketic, Elle Woods is a beautiful girl. She was dating a man named Warner Huntington III. Elle has suspicions that Warner is going to propose to her, but instead, he says, “Proposing?! Elle, If I’m going to be a politician, I need to marry a Jackie, not a -- Marilyn” (Luketic). This implies that men in today’s society want a woman who is smart, a woman who is going to be successful. Although girls are expected to be educated and successful, they do not have the same expectations as boys. In the Ted Talk by Reshma Saujani, she says “We’re taught to smile pretty, play it safe, get all A’s”

(Teach). This implies that girls are sheltered in how successful they can be. It also implies that they are not supposed to take risks. Girls have found this new way of life where they can have jobs and be successful, but only if they know that they can not fail. They have no room for error. “We’re raising our girls to be perfect, and we’re raising our boys to be brave”(Teach). Boys are raised to take chances in terms of their success and their education. The idea that women can be ambitious and have careers is not a new thing to some women, but it is a new idea in society. Girls have always been inferior to boys. Many think that girls are not as strong as their male counterparts, so when girls want to be successful they limit themselves in order to not embarrass themselves. Although women are still seen as inferior to men in the aspect of successfulness and ambition, girls are still expected to find a career.
Despite all of the expectations for women, the most known is having children.

Since the world began women have always been expected to bear children for their husbands. The thought of having children can be scary to women because their whole life they have been working to look beautiful and start a career. More and more women these days are deciding to put themselves first and deciding to wait to have children or not have them at all. In the book, Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-first Century, Anita Harris states, “The ‘girls with the world at their feet’ are identifiable by their commitment to exceptional careers and career planning, their belief in their capacity to invent themselves and succeed, and their display of a consumer lifestyle. They are also distinguished by a desire to put off childbearing until ‘later’”(Harris). This implies that it is very tough for women who have a successful and demanding career to have children and be focused on their family. Having a child takes a lot of time and patience, and a woman who is focused on her career might not want to take time away from that to have a child. Women feel that they are constantly making sacrifices in order to please everyone else but themselves. This common theme is described in the article “A Mother’s Day Kiss-Off” by Leslie Bennetts. Bennetts says “Her retreat seemed like a powerful metaphor for the ways in which women sacrifice parts of themselves that they shouldn’t have to give up” (Bennetts). In

this article, Bennetts is explaining how women have always been pushed back in order for everyone else to get what they want. She has felt the effect of this personally and has talked to multiple women who feel the same way. Most women probably feel that they have no choice but to have children. It is a social norm, and when someone does not follow accordingly they are looked at in a negative way. Many believe that a woman’s true job and vocation is to get married and have a couple children. This is believed and expected by many because that has been the way things have been ever since the world began. It can be read in many bible verses that it is a woman’s destiny to become a mother. “Psalms 128:3-127:4 - Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table”(King James Version) implies that all women want children and that they should. It implies that no matter where they are in life, successful or not, kids should be at the top of their agenda. The bible is one of the oldest forms of media. This implies that for a woman to state that she does not wish to be married or does not want to have children that she is in the wrong because she is going against teachings that have been around for centuries. For a woman who focuses on herself, she is seen as greedy and ungrateful for not utilizing the gift that she was given, to bear children.