Once upon a time, in a land not very far away — Tucker, in fact — lived a 5-year-old girl named Gabi Yulo who didn’t like princesses. She even hated the signature princess color: pink.
Her mom, Michele Yulo, was a bit perplexed as Gabi played with race cars and dressed up as Superman.
Until one day, Gabi’s mother got an idea.
Everywhere else throughout the land, princess power was taking over. Sparkly tiaras. Light-up wands. Layers upon layers of tulle and organza. Not to mention the much-publicized recent nuptials of Kate Middleton, who found her real-life prince.
Taming such princess mania would require superherolike strength. Or even better, a new superheroine.
Gabi’s mother decided to create a new kind of superhero — Super Tool Lula. She’s a 10-year-old girl wearing a tool belt who helps her dad with carpentry projects; a superhero who loves science, skateboards and proudly wears a Princess Free Zone emblem on her chest (a tiara inside the universal no symbol). Super Tool Lula’s dad is also inspired by real life. Yulo’s husband, and Gabi’s father, works as a professional carpenter.
Goodbye, frills. Hello, drills.
“Yes, this is very much inspired by my own daughter. We would go into department stores and toy stores and see so much princess stuff and she would want none of it,” said Yulo. “And I thought, surely she can’t be the only one. I kept thinking, they are leaving a whole group of girls out in the girls department.”
Shortchanging girls?
Yulo, who has been unemployed since being laid off from a job in late 2008, recently unveiled Super Tool Lula on her website — www.princessfreezone.com — and has been visiting schools reading her newly written (though not yet published) stories about Lula’s adventures.
Super Tool Lula might be just a tiny voice in a society that seems to endlessly swoon over princesses, but it offers girls, and their parents, something outside the box, or in this case, the castle.
“You have to infuse other images of girlhood so they can have a bigger closet of ideas,” said Peggy Orenstein, author of the book, “Cinderella Ate My Daughter” (HarperCollins, $25.99). “We are shortchanging our girls. When we are so wrapped up in princesses, we are not encouraging them to play with other things.”
In recent years, princesses have become all the rage with young girls, with marketers and retailers fueling the fire. Up until about a decade ago, for instance, Disney would roll out princess paraphernalia with each of its movies featuring such heroines. But then the entertainment giant saw the opportunity for a never-ending tiara market.
In her book, Orenstein discusses the “princess machine,” which includes the more than 26,000 Disney princess items on the market. In 2009 alone, Disney princess products generated sales of $4 billion.
And it’s not just Disney cashing in on the princess craze. Toy stores are filled with princess-inspired garb and props, shoes, lamps, even chalk. Local party businesses offer look-alikes to Disney’s princess and fairy characters to make surprise visits at birthday parties across metro Atlanta.
Less than a year ago, Antalita Raynor opened up tiara party central in Fayetteville, a business called “Dolls & Divas” for girls between the ages of 3 and 14. For girls 8 and younger, a princess-themed party is almost a given, she said. After that, girls who are 8 and older graduate into diva-inspired parties, which includes dressing up, body glitter, a fashion show and dancing, she said.
“Princesses are huge. Girls love the dresses. And they add butterfly clips in their hair and then add yellow wings,” said Raynor, who has more than 30 princess dresses to choose from. You name it, she has it: Cinderella. Belle. Jasmine. Tiana. Ariel ...
“They love to keep changing, too. I let them change three times and then, I am like, OK, that’s enough,” said Raynor, whose party venue features a disco ball and dance floor. The dress-up-and-dance party packages start at $275.
Preschool-aged girls gravitating toward princess paraphernalia is seen as perfectly natural, as the youngsters grab onto girly-girl things in identifying with their gender.
Goddess vs. princess
Orenstein, who lives in California, is particularly concerned with what comes after the princess phase — when children face an onslaught of feminine products such as glittery eye shadow, lip gloss and eyeliner for children and sassy (which she terms “sexy with training wheels”) clothing — marketed to younger and younger girls. She worries about the hyperfocus on appearance.
In her own home, Orenstein, who has a 7-year-old daughter, Daisy, said she didn’t ban princess stuff, but she avoided the Disney characters.
Instead, she and her daughter read Greek mythology. For Halloween, Daisy dressed up as Athena, the goddess of wisdom.
Orenstein said all girls need more choices. Instead of an exclusively pink wardrobe, think about tie-dying T-shirts. Instead of buying a Disney dress, think about getting your daughter a sheet of satin that, through her imaginative play, can be used for all storytelling. And don’t forget about Legos (and it doesn’t have to be the castle set).
“I saw an ad from 1981 with a little girl in braids and overalls playing with basic, multicolored Legos,” said Orenstein. “And I thought, nowadays, you wouldn’t see the basic Legos. And the girl, she wouldn’t be in overalls. She would be in a princess outfit.”
No magic wand
In recent weeks, Yulo has been introducing Super Tool Lula to dozens of children at elementary schools in metro Atlanta. She shares the story about the girl named Lula just doing her thing, enjoying playing make believe, pretending to be Superman. But then, Lula gets teased by classmates who say she’s a “boy.”
Lula, fortunately, has special powers, including a kind of X-ray vision that can send out “kind-waves,” like laser beams, to such children, turning mean little hearts into big, kind ones.
Super Tool Lula doesn’t simply offer an antidote to princess fever. She also comes to the aid of children who are bullied. Super Tool Lula encourages children to accept differences.
And that includes letting girls know it’s OK to take a pass on princesses.
Still, parents can’t just wave a magic wand to make the princess avalanche disappear. Trish Shaw of Atlanta said princesses make her 3-year-old daughter yawn, but she has a hard time finding other options.
“My daughter is not really into princesses. And I want my daughter to be her own person,” said Shaw. “But you go into a Walmart, and you will see a Barbie aisle and then a princess Barbie aisle. The clothes and backpacks. It’s all princesses. It’s hard to avoid princesses even if you try. ... You can’t even find a plain purple bookbag. It has to have a princess on it.”
Michele Yulo understands her predicament. She says Super Tool Lula is here for her daughter — and all girls — to know it’s OK to say no to tiaras. That it’s OK to say no to pink.
In fact, her daughter Gabi, the inspiration for Lula, is about to paint her bedroom. She’s considering various shades of green.
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