Since having children—my three sons are ages 11, 9 and 4—I’ve personally become less invested in my own appearance. It’d be easy to blame this negligence upon the frenetic pace of working parenthood and the fact that as a writer, sweatpants are generally acceptable work attire. But a big part of my aversion to gussying up is this: I’m completely turned off by the prettification of little girls. It’s almost as if in rebellion, I don’t want to accessorize, coif, or pose in order to avoid contributing to the madness.

I’m not alone in believing that the pink craze (think, Disney) has spiraled out of control (the company just launched a line of princess inspired wedding dresses). All of it—from clothes to music to snacks aggressively marketed—creates a kind of straight shot from Pochahantis to the Cheetah Girls to the Pussycat Dolls back to a princess-themed wedding? From the endless reports about starlets’ ultra-skinny bodies or what body parts they are overexposing (think, Brittany without underwear or hair) to childhood obesity in near-epidemic proportions, we’re a society ricocheting between extremes. Provocative images and clothing and music flood these kids but it’s not pop culture alone, it’s an accompanying shift toward gender codification: things that were once (and by once, I mean when my eleven-year old was small) unisex—disposable diapers, for example, or tricycles—now come color-coded by gender.

During kindergarten, my middle son told me he wanted his next lunchbox to have a mirror in it like Hannah’s. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Cornell historian and author of The Body Project, counsels adults never to comment upon girls’ appearance. Comment instead, she suggests, on what they are doing. Following that advice is not so easy. Just try it. Girls’ clothing is dolled up with pastel hues, flowers, and cutesy details in order to encourage comment. Activities like ballet seem to be organized around girls’ outfits: leotard, slippers, even a tutu. When my middle guy began ballet in preschool, he was devastated to be stuck in black tights and white t-shirt surrounded by a veritable sea of pink. At recital time, the girls got filmy skirts; he got a sash. Black and white didn’t hold a candle to all that frothy pink. We gave him a pink leotard, tights and slippers for his birthday so he could dance around at home, savoring his prettiness.

These days, my youngest, himself a highly aesthetically attuned four-year-old with shaggy hair and a penchant for mixing stripes, pants with pockets and wearing plenty of his favorite color, brown, has contempt for the “Pretty Pretty Princess” game played by girls in his class (plus Emmett). “Pretty is dumb,” he declares. He has altered the word, in fact, so appalled by pretty that when something’s pretty, it’s “licorice.” We talk about how pretty isn’t everything and how not only girls like pretty (for example, Emmett). The older kids discuss more complicated realities like the notion that calling non-girly girls tomboys pegs them as boy-like. And how boys with non-stereotypical preferences are sometimes called sissies. So to find oneself in any way outside the “norm” is almost de facto to be slated as defective.

In Hollywood, an alternative to skeletal girls has come into vogue curviness in the forms of Sara Ramirez, Tyra Banks, Jennifer Hudson and America Ferrera. These women doubly impress because none of them is crashing and burning en route to rehab. But leading collegiate basketball players like Courtney and Ashley Paris and Alison Bales inspired me most recently. Bales proudly wore three-inch heels, which made her 6 feet 10 inches tall in a December photograph taken while the team was in Cancún, Mexico. Bales said a photograph of her in heels on Duke’s Web site had elicited several grateful messages from tall girls or their parents. In Jere Longman’s February New York Times article, “Rejecting Stereotypes, Embracing Size” Courtney Paris’ coach, Gail Goestenkors, explains, “Before, tall girls were all soft and finesse and didn’t want contact. Now it’s strong, physical, bring on the contact. Courtney epitomizes that.”

With powerful and tall and big women leading the way in NCAA basketball, small and willowy isn’t always “in.” Courtney Paris is quoted in the Times’ article, “We’re women who are not apologizing for being bigger and being different or for being athletic. It’s more acceptable in society. For my generation, it’s really not a big deal.” You might call these players anti-pink. Here’s what I personally like about these women: they use their bodies and they are proud of their strength; they have confidence in themselves; they have aspirations beyond sport and beyond appearance. Not your average princesses or superheroes, these young women are extremely positive role models (for both girls and boys). And, by the way, they are incredible to look at.