book review: Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein
The backstory: I've enjoyed Peggy Orenstein's features in The New York Times Magazine for years and loved her memoir about infertility and adoption, Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, a Romantic Night, and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother . The basics: Peggy Orenstein's subtitles really serve as their own descriptions: Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture . My thoughts: I've long been fascinated (and concerned) with what I perceive as a reversion to gender normative expectations and stereotypes. I fear the U.S. is regressing, and it's a trend I'm troubled by. Although I'm not a mother, I'm intrigued by the gender roles young children find themselves in, and this book included tales that frightened me: "They respond to questions about how their bodies feel--questions about sexuality or arousal--by describing how they thi...