My daughter has an uncanny ability to take a refreshingly modern princess and knock her right back into the 20th century.

For a couple years, I accepted it. What point would there be in trying to teach a 6-year-old about romantic love? I'm not inclined to encourage someone who doesn't like frogs to start kissing them all in search of a prince.

And no, seeing "The Princess and the Frog" didn't change my mind about that. However, it did make me rethink how I talk to my kids about movies in general. While my daughter is still in line with characters who act the part of princesses while waiting for their princes to come, Disney has evolved. The princesses I grew up with were mostly the type willing to be whisked away by strange guys named Charming, but today's Disney women can stand on their own and tend to want more than an excuse to wear ball gowns on a regular basis. I guess that's why I bristled when my daughter walked out of Disney's latest effort imitating one of the characters — by demanding that she have a full wardrobe of fairy tale dresses.

The movie features Disney's first African-American princess, who is self-sufficient to a fault. It marks a return to lush, hand-drawn animation, which felt much more luxurious than I expected. And, like other reworked fairy tales, it features characters who evolve and make decisions based on what they've learned, rather than what they expected. It's not a movie that should push a little girl to work hard and play hard, not one that should make her want to go shopping for formal wear.

Maybe I wanted my daughter to appreciate Tiana because she's so much more accessible than others. She didn't grow up in a castle or have to escape an evil stepmother. She's a working-class girl from a loving family, who has a dream and the drive to achieve it. And the privileged blonde with wardrobe my daughter covets is Tiana's friend, not her nemesis, which was nice. The movie does have one truly absolutely evil character — how else does a prince become a frog? — but for the most part, the characters are forgivably flawed.

And that's the problem. If the girl with the fabulous dresses was as one-dimensional as one of Cinderella's evil stepsisters, then it would be easy to identify Tiana as the role model. But when Tiana's working around the clock and still poor, while her friend Charlotte has a rich daddy who spoils her rotten, it's a bit murky. What first-grade girl wouldn't pick toys over boys?

Ultimately, I couldn't get my daughter to see things from my perspective, but she'll learn the value of immaterial things soon enough. For now, I'll just be content that she obviously feels she's lacking for ball gowns, not for love.

When she's not being a journalist, Treena Shapiro is busy with her real job, raising a son and daughter. Check out her blog at www.HonoluluAdvertiser.com/Blogs.