Disney & Princess?????

amother

Tue, Oct 10 2006, 8:56 am

hello,

I don’t allow my children to watch Disney movies, especially the princess ones, as the characters are often untznius as are the story lines...BUT my daughter knows of them (kinda of) through cousions, target trips and other kids at her school. While playing dress up she always wants to be an 'untznius princess' dafka! I don’t know what to do about it, should I be stern and insist her play is modest or be lax and hope she is just exploring through play? Either approach I feel can backfire! any suggestions?

Rolling Eyes

chocolate moose

Tue, Oct 10 2006, 12:07 pm

I don't know if the OP is a Lub or not..but if she is, she must certainly have heard of Yehudis Heller.

Mrs. Heller used to tell us to brainwash our kids! That it was the only way to convince the kids that something was true - to show them pictures in magazines of women dressed tsniusly and show the kids how beautiful they are.

To dress our dolls just like us. Etc.

It's very hard to compete with the outside world. I'm sure you know that.

Annie

Tue, Oct 10 2006, 11:24 pm

Depends how old she is. I would say "ride it out" as long as she's not doing it in public and is young. My now-7 year old was very into princesses (from age 3-5) and I just kind of humored her (it didn't help that many of our relatives kept buying her princess stuff because she loved it so much).

She got to a point where she realized they weren't tznius and the dress up clothes didn't fit anymore. Now if she wants to be a princess she puts on a leotard or something underneath so she's tznius, but mostly she just wants to be a princess or a kallah, it doesn't matter which one.

Momoftwins, I think that's a fine idea. It'll make a perfect queen esther dress.

Wed, Oct 18 2006, 7:29 am

I would be very wary of insisting she play only in a tznius way if she's at home because the resenment caused can bring about a general resentment towards religion.
Better yet, buy/make her a glittery, pouffy, tznius dress-up outfit with sequin slippers an tiara - get her involved, maybe she can stick on fluffy trim or coloured beads, iron-on metallic shapes etc an hopefully she will love it so much she can act out her fantasies in a tznius way.

baseballmom

Tue, Dec 26 2006, 3:41 pm

CL,

I think your suggestion is an excellent one.

My 4 yo dd isn't into disney and princesses but a lot of her friends are. I wan't thrilled when one of her friends had a princess party, or when the favors/gifts were untzniusdik princesses. Someone even once gave us a disney book all about princesses and love stories...totally inappropriate for a 4 yo and totally not what I want my frum 4 yo to read...so in the evening I went through the stuff and got rid of all the untzniusdik stuff, but I did let her go to the party, and I didn't make a big issue out of it...I just try really hard not to bring it into the house as much as I can.

Just my 2 cents...

Imaonwheels

Wed, Dec 27 2006, 2:32 am

I, from age 3 made tznius an awareness. If my dd said that some frei neighbor's clothes were pretty I would say but are they tznius? Don't worry we also had plenty of talks about how some of our Temeni neighbors were not zocheh to learn Torah and it is certainly not their fault. we didn't have princesses except Queen Esther. I did brainwash. Tznuah Queen Esther loved HaShem and whoever saw her saw how beautiful she was, even the king. Vashti was not tznius and she had chutzpa, was green and had horns. Children who grow up in mixed neighborhoods or among nonJews are not so simplistic that if they saw someone beautiful dressed nontzniusly it would endanger their emuna. We would just talk about how much more beautiful they would be dressed tzniusly.

Our taste says a lot to our children as well. The elements of nontznius dressing can be made distasteful in a child's eyes. I let dd go to one home of a family that we had a close connection to and their laxities hurt my dd and today I would handle that friendship differently. But the damage was not lasting and in the most difficult years anyway - teenage. I credit that to HaShem's protection and the fact that lack of tznius was referred to in our house not only as something HaShem really doesn't like but also the height of poor taste and disrespect for yourself.

The teenage years are a different story. Their hormones are louder than their brains and most other voices and that is why they think that too tight, slits and low cut looks nice. At that age the parents must hold the reins 100% but not pull too tight.

Mrs.Norris

Wed, Dec 27 2006, 7:24 pm

imaonwheels, isn't that being a bit too harsh on anyone who doesn't dress tzniut? I don't get how children can learn to respect others if all they're taught from a young age is how disgusting these people are. It's quite offensive actually, children repeat the stuff they hear at home, can you imagine if one of your children went up to these people and said it to their faces?
I actually find it a problem in some very frum families (not necessarily targetting this at anyone here) where the children have no respect for anyone who doesn't look frum, I remember some kids from a very religious family telling someone that they were not Jewish because they were wearing trousers.

As for the whole "issue" to be honest I would never have even thought about Disney cartoons being an issue, but maybe I'm just a bit naive. I think if you make a big deal out of it it's just drawing attention to something your child probably isn't even thinking of.
I was brought up watching Disney films and truthfully did not even think about what the characters were wearing until reading this thread, when I was young no one made an issue out of it so my attention wasn't drawn to it.

mumoo

Wed, Dec 27 2006, 8:59 pm

It's not just the questionable dress. My objections to Disney princesses are that she is usually orphaned and has a wicked stepparent, and she is helpless until the charming prince rescues her. I also object to the love at first sight /falling in love mishegas that we also hear on the radio. I think it sets up people for unrealistic romantic notions regarding real love/marriage.

I did let first dd watch, and truthfuly, I really liked Beauty and the Beast. It hdidn't have those particular objectionable themes, and there was a redeeming lesson about judging appearances.

Imaonwheels

Thu, Dec 28 2006, 12:37 pm

Mrs.Norris wrote:

Remember in this day and age our tolerance indoctrination has made it impossible to disagree w/o offending. My neighbors would be straight w/me and me w/them. That is called respect. The opposite of humoring.

My dd is now 24 and we have never had that prob. She has friends who are frei and friends who are charedi and everything in between. She was thrown out of a school for refusing to quit helping a girl (not from her school) a yr younger than her who got preg. I also thought that this girl was too much of a case for a teenage girl but I was proud that she felt so strongly about another girl being shunned.

She has visited my family in the states, an excercize in tolerance (and dealing with intolerance) if there ever was one. She enjoys visiting them.

We lived in that neighborhood almost as shluchim, the Chabad asked us to be the first young couple in what was basically a frei neighborhood. The neighbors were in our house often and my children knew fine well never to offend them. They did know however that the mode of dressing was crass, tasteless and demeaning to the women.

Quote:

disgusting these people are.

Who said the people were disgusting. I am still in contact w/some of those families after 20 yrs. One family became frum. They were very nice neighbors.

Ruchel

Thu, Dec 28 2006, 1:24 pm

Mrs.Norris wrote:

As for the whole "issue" to be honest I would never have even thought about Disney cartoons being an issue, but maybe I'm just a bit naive. I think if you make a big deal out of it it's just drawing attention to something your child probably isn't even thinking of.
I was brought up watching Disney films and truthfully did not even think about what the characters were wearing until reading this thread, when I was young no one made an issue out of it so my attention wasn't drawn to it.

Same here. These cartoons show a fantasy world, taking place centuries ago (in the case of the princesses), and among the non jews. So I don't think a child would think it is the norm.

Quote:

I also object to the love at first sight /falling in love mishegas

Wow. Don't worry, if I ever meet your children I'll make sure I never tell them the stories of the many love at first sight couples in my family, including mine, my parents, my grandparents.... LOL