Early last month, I learned that Vanderkam-Conway Baby No. 2 will be another little boy. While that does mean I’ll be completely outnumbered in this household, friends have pointed out a silver lining: I may yet escape the whole Princess cultural juggernaut.

While little girls have always loved playing princess, in recent years this has exploded as a marketing category. Disney re-packaged its movie heroines as a princess set and, as I learned from Megan Basham’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Friday called “Bringing Up Princess: Turning Girls Into Narcissists,” even Christian retail outlets are pushing “God’s Girlz” princesses and T-shirts noting that one gets to be a princess as a daughter of the King. She laments the idea of parents “who put their girls on a pedestal” and allow the “notion of privilege that goes along with it.”

I find it funny, though, that Basham is taking a stand against princesses, given the whole thesis of her recent book. I reviewed Beside Every Succesful Man for The American a few months ago. The subtitle of this tome is “getting the life you want by helping your husband get ahead.” The idea is that you should throw yourself into promoting his career so ultimately… you don’t have to devote your life to such mundane things as working for pay. Sounds a bit princess-y, no?

I mean really, think about it. Cinderella is the ultimate princess fantasy. A girl is taken from her toil amid the cinders and, because she is prettiest and dressed the nicest at the ball, she catches the eye of the handsome prince. In the bloody original non-Disney version of the tale, her step-sisters mutilate their own feet to fit into the glass slippers, since as their mother points out, when you are Queen you won’t have to walk. In other words, you won’t have to work. Of course, the birds tell the prince to look back, there’s blood on the track, and Cinderella’s foot fits the slipper even without amateur surgery. But the fundamental princess fantasy remains: If you are pretty enough and play your cards right, a man will come rescue you and support you so you can end your labors.

This seems to be precisely the thought process of the New York Times brides Linda Hirshman profiled in her “Homeward Bound” piece for the American Prospect several years ago, that I blogged about a few weeks ago (see below). These women — who’d labored as lawyers, businesswomen, etc. — were not on short career breaks because they were tending small children (which, admittedly, has many non-princess elements to it, as I’ve found while cleaning up poop after accidents in the bath tub). As she wrote, “Half my Times brides quit before the first baby came. In interviews, at least half of them expressed a hope never to work again. None had realistic plans to work. More importantly, when they quit, they were already alienated from their work or at least not committed to a life of work.” In other words, they weren’t about to head back when the kids hit kindergarten.

As Katie Couric pointed out in her speech to the Princeton class of 2009, there are many practical problems with this idea that a man is a financial plan, including that he can die, become disabled, leave you or lose his job. But leaving aside that, there is a lot of joy to be gained from achieving professionally as well as personally. I don’t see why women should aim to experience this joy second-hand, basking in their husbands’ success, as Basham’s book suggests. If we’re going to indulge in princess stories, I prefer the one of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria who most historians agree was the most capable of the Hapsburg rulers. Back in the 18th century, though she did some things that might strike us as barbaric now, she also instituted many social reforms in her empire including compulsory education, a more lax penal code, and relief for the serfs. She consolidated Austria’s rule and preserved the empire for years to come — while bearing 16 children, 10 of whom survived to adulthood. By all accounts, she had a reasonably happy marriage. She was one of the few 18th century monarchs who married for love. While her marriage was far from perfect, having 16 children requires sustaining a certain level of fondness over the years.

There’s no getting around the fact that little girls love sparkly tiaras. But I suppose, as a good feminist mom, one can try to steer the princess phase more toward monarchs like Maria Theresa and away from Cinderella. She had her crown, but didn’t just get “the life you want by helping your husband get ahead.” She made such a life on her own.