During the first two years of parenthood, I was able to maintain the princess blockade in our home with very few breaches. Although my wife and I never talked about princesses in front of the kids, they heard the word constantly, because it's the default term of affection total strangers use when addressing them. Because the word had no associations for the girls, however, it probably meant no more to them than "cutie pie."

Inevitably, though, Disney Princess items started appearing in the playroom. One day when the girls were primping with purple combs emblazoned with images of Cinderella, Belle, and Rapunzel—trifles from birthday party gift bags—they asked me what the glamorous figures were called.

"Um..." I sputtered, unable to think of a good euphemism for the dreaded P-word, "...little ladies."

So princesses were called "little ladies" for several months, even after an anthology of Disney Princess stories somehow made it into heavy bedtime rotation, and branded plastic trinkets started spontaneously generating and multiplying in their toy collection.

When my wife, who had never been as stridently anti-princess as I had, took advantage of an online sale of children's costumes, she succumbed to the cuteness of a sparkly yellow Belle outfit, and a shimmering blue Cinderella dress. There were other costumes—a doctor, a pirate, and a firefighter—but the girls immediately gravitated toward the frilly frocks.

As if the anemic spell I had placed to keep them from crossing over into Princess World would be broken when I spoke the magic word, I still refused to call their new favorite playthings by their real names. We called the princess costumes "ball gowns" for as long as the charade would last.

Sometime after my daughters' third birthday, I gave up. My resistance to princess culture only made me look like a crank, and an impotent one at that. And frankly, my cold, black heart melted whenever I saw my little girls in their royal finery. As long as my objections did little to stem the tide, I figured I might as well enjoy it. Anyway, how much more intense could their princess fixation become?

By Christmas Day of 2012, they had amassed nine princess costumes. Not only do they now have princess dolls in all sizes, densities, and textures; they also have princess Play-Doh sets, Legos, Band-Aids, slippers, underwear, crayons, coloring books, puzzles, and even a potty, just to name a fraction of their royal gewgaws. "Princessing" products marketed to little girls is like doping in the world of professional cycling: you don't stand a chance against the competition if you don't participate.

Other parents of girls assured me that it's just a phase, and that childhood princess thrall had had no long-term effects on their daughters. My fears were placated for a while. But when a mom of one of my girls' preschool classmates told me that her daughter, previously ignorant of princess culture, had come home from school with a thorough knowledge of Disney's royal lineage, which she had attributed to my twins, I became concerned again. They were no longer just users; they had become pushers.