“Disney Animation is closing the door on fairy tales” and who’s to blame?  Girls that are growing up too fast.  The animation studio that demonstrated that a kiss can wake you from a coma, glass slippers make for poor running shoes, and singing under water is possible – has no plans for making any more films based on the princess premise.

People still love a good princess story, real or fictional.  Take for example this weekend.  Disney’s “Tangled,” a modern retelling of Rapunzel, delivered the second biggest Thanksgiving weekend of all time.  Meanwhile in Mexico, Mexicans were enthralled as Angelica Rivera, the soap opera starlet, married Enrique Peña Nieto, the 2012 presidential front-runner.  She, a divorced mother of three, he, a widower with three children of his own, good looks, power, glamour– all the trappings of a modern-day fairy tale wedding.

Disney however, isn’t denying the popularity of princesses in the modern age – rather little girls don’t seem to want to stay very little for very long.  Disney’s billion-dollar princess franchise begins waning in popularity around 5 or 6 years of age, when little girls trade the Cinderella tiara for a Hannah Montana wig.

Compare these headlines:

Headlines from Seventeen magazine in the 1970s
What Your Voice Tells about You
The Gentle Art of Understanding Your Parents
Hurry-Up Hairdos
How to Beat the Gossip Game
Which Is Best-Oldest, Middle, Youngest Child?
Prize Fiction
How Can I Get Him to Notice Me?
Write, Illustrate, Photograph Stories
Poems and Reports from Worldwide Places

Headlines from Teen magazine in 2004
The Sexiest Hairstyles; The Sexiest Jeans
On Girls, Geeks, and Going All the Way
How to Be Happy, Calmer, and Hotter
203 Ways to Look Crazy Good!
438 Ways to Meet Tons of Guys
Turn-On Secrets He’ll Never Tell You
Get a Better Body in Two Weeks
476 Ways to Look Sexy for Spring
Hot! Sexy-Guy Postcards Inside

Educators are also entering the discussion, because in the age when pre-schoolers can read, the question now being asked in academia is: are we pushing too hard, too soon?  Recess and P.E. are easily sacrificed for more classroom time preparing for standardized tests.  What happens to play?  What effect does this have on how kids develop?  Some are arguing that the imagination that is developed through child play is essential for personal development and critical thinking.

But for marketers, does this mean that a 7 year-old girl is fair play for teen marketing?  Where do you draw the line: make up, clothing, music?  Or do we realize that a pendulum swings both ways, and what is really happening is that there is an opportunity to market to this gaping hole in the market?  After all, a child in a Hannah Montana wig is essentially, well…a child.

photo credit: fanpop, Latin Gossip