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I detest the ubiquity of the Disney princesses, their dominance over American girlhood. But I like "Frozen." How do I balance Disney in my kids' lives?

(Jennie Park Photography, Creative Commons)

I have a thing against Disney princesses.

I dislike their tiny waists and perma-makeup and movie-star hair impossible to replicate in real life. I detest the idea that they need a man to save them. I hate their ubiquity, their dominance of modern American girlhood.

But I like "Frozen."

More than a year after the movie debuted – kicking off a $1 billion avalanche of merchandise on its way to becoming the top-grossing animated film of all time – I gave the DVD to my daughter for Christmas.

Then, I snuggled with my son to watch.

I already knew the song "Let it Go!" as if by osmosis (or just radio play). But I was genuinely surprised by the plot, and by the delight that burbled up as I watched.

I like that Princess Anna embarks on an odyssey to save her sister, Queen Elsa. I like that Anna rescues a big, strapping man hanging off a cliff. I like characters' yin and yang of good and evil, power and insecurity.

Though I don't get why preschool girls are gaga for Elsa, moreso than Anna.

And I still don't like the princess thing.

Since Disney introduced the Disney Princess brand in 2000, the animated royal movie heroines have become a $4 billion business, gracing more than 26,000 products, from "Tangled" hair pieces and "Frozen" apples to princess toothbrushes and pink TVs topped with tiaras. There are Princess Wheelies, each with a custom car (Jasmine, for instance, drives a flying carpet) and bug-eyed Disney Princess My First Bedtime Baby Dolls, with tiara rattles and bottles in signature colors.

"We have a robust 365-day-a-year princess business, and among princesses, Cinderella is the one," Josh Silverman, executive VP, global licensing for Disney Consumer Products, told Variety.

"Cinderella" -- the classic damsel-in-distress movie from 1950, which is being remade as a live-action film this year -- rules this cultural phenomenon, in which girls are referred to no longer as girls, but as princesses. Even my dad called my daughter "Princess" once. Once.

Disney "launched this whole princess industrial complex," Peggy Orenstein, an Oberlin College graduate and author of "Cinderella Ate My Daughter, told me for a story a few years ago.

Monika Bartyzel writes in "The Week" that the problem of Disney princesses is not the movies themselves, but the princess sorority's "very narrow version of femininity that has a significant impact on its young consumers' visions of themselves."

Ditto. I don't hate Disney, per se. I adored "The Little Mermaid" songs as a kid. I dug bookish Belle in "Beauty and the Beast." I think it's cute my son likes Mater from the movie "Cars," and I will happily treat my kids to Disney on Ice and eventually Walt Disney World.

But how do I keep Disney from taking over their childhood? And how do I keep my almost 2-year-old daughter from transforming from a train-loving, block-building book-reader into a costume-wearing, makeup-obsessed princess wannabe?

My friends and family have respected my princess aversion. But I did let her grandma give my daughter glittery dress-up heels for Christmas, since she loves shuffling around in my flats.

What will keep the princess thing from snowballing, though, I think, will be me. I'll never encourage it. Neither will her big brother.

He just might keep her from fixating on her looks. And, I hope, from seeing boys as her savior.