Ok, here’s the thing.  I was the biggest tomboy you can imagine.  Not just literally (although I did stand about a foot taller than the tallest boy in  my preschool class…) but the holes in your toughskins, non-matching garanimals, Star Wars card collecting in a tree kind of tomboy.

And yet.  I had one of those Barbie heads where you can style the hair.  And I loooooooved it.

Cut to the girliest of the girly girls.  My daughter, Bean.  I do not quite know what to do with the swirling collection of girlyness that is her.

This is how she posed for the first day of school today:

And no, I didn’t tell her to stand like that.  I can’t even convincingly stand like that.

So, give this little bedazzling creature an app that lets you pick a Disney Princess, choose a fancy event she is attending, style her hair (yes the app kind of miraculously lets your kid style a cartoon character’s hair as if she is touching it), pick her clothes, the color and fabric of her gown, choose accessories, and then save the photo in an album–and she is in heaven.  The new Disney Princess Royal Salon App (I know, the name makes me want to barf too) does just that.

Bean loves it.

And honestly, I think it’s pretty fun too.

What is most fun, is the seemingly inexhaustible combination of options for creating your character’s look.  You choose if you want to dress Cinderella, Rapunzel, Belle or Ariel.  The characters look pretty much like they did in the movies too–not all grown up and ultra-busty.  Then you can choose from a number of events.  And then the options for fabrics and dresses and hair and accessories just go on and on. And if you’re wondering how you can possibly style an animated character’s hair, I just have to say, trust me.  It’s like the Barbie head times a thousand.  Except that pretty much every choice you make actually looks good. More often than not my poor Barbie head looked like a zombie drag queen.

Look, I am the first person to try to de-princessify my daughter’s life.  I want to keep her young.  I want her to get muddy (and not track it in my apartment…).  I want her building and climbing and racing and singing.  But I know that styling hair has its joys.  And that curiosity about how changing one’s look changes one’s sense of self, is part of growing up.  And fashion design is actually an amazing thing.  And some enchanted storytelling can be wonderful.

So I am happy to see how much Bean enjoys the Disney Princess Royal Salon.  And I am super glad we got to review it.  It sure takes up less space in the apartment than the Barbie Head would.

Thanks to Disney for sending us the Disney Princess Royal Salon to review. As always, all opinions are mine and the Bean’s and you better believe were not influenced by anyone.

This post originally appeared on Babies Gotta Have It.