I would hate to think that this all boils down to keeping young girls away from popular culture, television, and marketing, but perhaps that is part of it. My granddaughter, age 5, seems to have a lot of the power and identity issue sorted out already. She convinced her mother to make a dragon costume and has been a dragon for the past two Halloweens. As she points out, "dragons eat princesses." It may help that her father, a research biophysicist, does all the cooking and laundry and takes her kayaking and that her mother is a mosaic artist and a licensed contractor with her own truck and toolboxes. She spends time in both workplaces. My granddaughter likes pink well enough -- along with orange, purple, and a rather bilious shade of green. Perhaps the key here is not the "keeping away from" so much as the offering of something more interesting?
