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When in Macy's a few months ago, I nearly became ill when I came upon a "Hannah Montana" tee for 5-year-olds. Fast forward to my daughter's third birthday and suddenly our house is filled with Disney Princess everything - shoes, art, clothes, pillows, toothbrush, toothpaste, coloring books, puzzles. Nearly all of these were gifts for her and she adores them all, but when I look around, I see as many images of Sleeping Beauty as I do of family members. It got me thinking - is this how it all begins, the celebrity culture for the toddler set?

Recently, I read an interview with Jane Fonda where she was saying that when she started out as an actress, the celebrity and tabloid culture we have wasn't what it is today. She thought many of the actresses of the '60s and '70s never could have made it through the scrutiny that stars like Lindsay Lohan and Angelina Jolie have endured of late. But we're contributing to the problem when we participate in the celebrity watching as adults and when we allow it to overwhelm our lives at home.

One friend of mine - first thing each day - reads Perez Hilton. Admittedly, she's my source for unreleased movie trailers, but if we all fall prey to the culture of "what she wears," "who he slept with," "why their marriage fell apart," about these people we don't actually know but whose photographs we have studied intimately, somehow putting them up on pedestals due to their notoriety, we're a part of the problem. Every time we buy a magazine with the face of a celebrity, we're participating in that culture - even when that magazine is helping boost an actress's image for a film she's promoting. It's a double-edged sword.

I'm not sure what's to do about it - if anything, really - except trying to educate our kids and limit what they see, hoping they can grow out of certain things. My neighbor's daughter, now 5, wants nothing to do with any logos or images of individuals. That's a pretty big statement to make at her age, but secretly I'm hoping my little one will grow out of her princess fixation as well. It's cute now, but I don't want her to turn into a crazed "Hannah" fan or an online celeb stalker. I want her to build dreams for herself and not buy into garbage about needing to be rescued by anyone else.

I never thought I'd need to worry about keeping a toddler away from overstimulating celebrity culture or sexist media, but I find myself contemplating modern feminism on a daily basis now. I am proud, however, that my little independent miss tends to name her stuffed animals girls and her gender default is feminine when anything is unidentified. It's bad enough she's obsessed with "The Wizard of Oz," an old school classic where Dorothy is almost entirely helpless, and where the Wizard talks of universities as places "where men go." Haven't we had enough of the witch and princess archetypes, or are we destined to always play Angelina vs. Jen? While Disney and others are making a fortune off of us and our friends, I'm not certain I want Cinderella as a permanent resident.

This is an original post from the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, http://www.svmoms.com.

Sarah Granger (http://www.grangers.com/) lives in Menlo Park, Calif., with her husband, their daughter and 35 Disney princesses.

© 2009, Sarah Granger.