parenting a princess

Our daughter Cd likes princesses.  A lot.  It's hard to blame her.  At least half of the entertainment targeted toward girls her age features the protagonist in a princess role (or a girl seeking to be a princess through marriage in Cinderella's case).  Of course she is going to latch onto the fact that the female protagonists that she likes all tend to have one specific role.  I am not sure how I am supposed to feel about things like this that the kids like.

In this case, part of my complication comes from the fact that I don't truly know what the appeal of princesses is to a girl.  I understand the draw that a boy has to superheroes or sports figures because I understand pretty much all of the fundamental needs and desires those roles fulfill in boys.  While I may have some good guesses, I don't truly understand the fundamental needs and desires that are being addressed through the princess character.  Is it being pretty and wearing pretty clothes?  Is it being special, because the princess is so important?  Is it being sophisticated (which I predictably misspelled until my spell-checker caught it)?  Is it the idea of being able to have all of your desires and whims be catered to?  Is it about having the power to be able to care for those who you care about?

With the superhero character I understand the positives and negatives.  Superheroes tend to be characters of action in a black and white world, and that action is violent with little repercussion due to hidden identity, so aggression glorified is the biggest danger.  A secondary danger is that the superhero fantasy validates the view that athletic ability (through genes or through military experiment gone awry) is the basis of a man's value.  The basic superhero fantasy is that by being able to do the things the superhero does you earn respect from others and self-respect you might not otherwise have.  Also, younger boys may not get this, but the fantasy extends to being a shortcut to proving your worth to a girl (be it your own equivalent of Mary Jane, Lois Lane, or Rachel Dawes).  I feel I can parent around these and other elements of the superhero character fairly easily, since I generally understand them.

However, the princess character is sort of giving me fits.  Is a princess a noble character, and is it noble to want to be a princess?  Is CD going to learn the right lessons from a typical Disney (or similar) princess character, or is she going to pick up bad traits?  Will she learn from the very stupid decisions the characters often make, or will she learn that those stupid paths are correct?  Will she learn that a lot of the guys these girls fall for in the movies are generally the types to be avoided?  Will she fantasize too much about being in a situation where others live to cater to her desires, or learn that she needs to take responsibility for a lot of the things in her life?  Will the fact that these characters are impossibly proportioned lead to body issues?  I know that I am probably over-thinking this, and I do not want CD to miss out on experiences that other girls her age have.  I just know less than I don't know about what girls get out of the princess fantasy, and that makes me uncomfortable.