Parents who worry their young daughters may be overexposed to princess images can take a small measure of satisfaction from a study showing that girls ages 3 to 6 don't suffer body-image problems from observing these characters. However, the study still found that little girls worry about being fat.

Several studies suggest that grade-school-age girls and teens compare themselves with fashion models and television and movie stars and may become dissatisfied with their own appearance.

But the new study, which surveyed 121 U.S. girls, found they were not affected by watching " Cinderella" or Belle in "Beauty and the Beast." Half of the girls watched videos of pretty, thin heroines and half watched videos that did not contain appearance-related messages. After observing the girls' behavior during play, the researchers concluded that young girls were more likely to adopt the persona of the princess instead of focusing on her appearance.

Despite this positive finding, 31 percent of the girls said they always worried about being fat and another 18 percent said they sometimes worried about being fat, according to the study, conducted by the researchers from the University of Central Florida.

"We need to help our children challenge the images of beauty, particularly thinness, that they see and idolize and encourage them to question how much appearance should be part of their self-worth," the lead author of the study, psychology professor Stacey Tantleff-Dunn, said in a news release.