The Princess Illusion Needs To Stop

It's time...the Princess Illusion needs to stop? What is #ThePrincessIllusion? You know it well - no matter how old you are and especially if you are a woman. It's Cinderella. It's Snow White. It's playing with Barbie dolls and Easy Bake Ovens. It's wearing pink just because...you're a girl.

The Princess Illusion is the push to gender power - rather minimize - today's next generation of women corporate leaders, scientists, scholars and authors. It's the concept that, no matter how successful your daughter is in life, it's just as important that she "marry" well - rather than simply revel in the professional and financial achievements SHE has earned all on her own.

#ThePrincessIllusion...it's very real.

You would think with the rise in millennials the Princess Illusion would be fading, and thankfully it is - millennial women don't want to be anyone's princess. Millennial women are committed to being individuals - leaders, thinkers, dreamers, planners, organizers.

Millennial women have a voice. millennial women want a world with gender neutrality, equal pay, equal opportunities, gender fairness and educational opportunities - and encouragement - for all. Millennial women are fearless and fierce, but we are also deeply - DEEPLY -

sensitive to the world around us. We want the next generations of girls to be empowered, not categorized or uninspired thanks to gender-specific categorization...and discrimination, which starts sometimes before they are even born.

It's the duty of all millennial women to mentor and inspire today's little girls, the ones that will lead the world as we one day are not the freshest faces in magazines and online articles. Millennial women will always have a voice - we will always have power. Let's start using it wisely, while we are still the glowing face current and future endeavors, businesses, cultural exploration, gender understanding, political advocacy and societal redefinition.

It's time for #ThePrincessIllusion to fade away to Neverland.

Follow #MillennialBella on Twitter @MillennialBella!