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The only times I’ve ever called my daughter “princess,” I was being sarcastic. As in, “I’m sorry, princess, you want me to hold the bar-b-q drumstick up to your mouth so you can take a bite without getting your fingers messy?” This actually happened over dinner this week, though I don’t know that I actually referred to her as princess. “Princess” just doesn’t roll off my tongue.
The occasion of a royal birth seems as good a time as any to examine my arguably irrational disdain for the current canon of princess stories that seems foisted upon today’s young girls at every age and turn. Back in the fall, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a guest appearance on Sesame Street to discuss the concept of a career with Abby Cadabby, a character who is a student at a flying fairy school. Abby was pretending to be a princess, which probably constitutes doing your homework if you go to a flying fairy school. (You can view the appearance at this link). Steven Colbert skewered the guest appearance by pointing out that while only four American girls have grown up to become Supreme Court Justices, a full eight American women have married kings or princes.
If probability of outcome were the measure by which we evaluate the utility of childhood play, the scene at my house would have looked something like this today:
My 2 year old daughter: “Rrrr, I’m a T. Rex.”
Me: “Quit that growling and stomping around. It is biologically impossible for you to grow up to be a T. Rex. Go find that calculator your grandmother gave you. If you want to pretend, you can pretend to be something you have a chance of actually working towards becoming – an accountant.”
Talk about killing the wonder of childhood.
I’m not generally a big fan of killing wonder or squelching possibilities; but when my daughter was born I did lay down a loose “no princess” rule, which her grandparents to their credit have largely respected. The question is why? Why do I have such a visceral negative reaction to the princessification of little girls?
I think my aversion to princesses boils down to the fact that I don’t care for what Disney has done with them. Once upon a time, fairy tales served a purpose. As Bruno Bettelheim convincingly argued in The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, fairy tales were a device to help children deal with and work through some of the more complicated emotions of childhood that a young person is not yet able to analyze or articulate. Mad at your mom, but unable to fully acknowledge anger towards someone upon whom you depend so closely – that’s what evil stepmothers are for!
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Historically, fairy tales have been told the world over with local cultural variation, yet the fundamental elements of dark conflict, potential peril and good vs. evil have always been present. Long before I became a parent, when my goddaughter was deep in her princess phase, for her birthday I gave her a beautifully illustrated copy of the Korean version of the Cinderella story. I even managed to find a child-sized, kimono-esque dress-up costume that resembled the illustrations in the book. I thought I was so clever, trying to use her interest in princesses as a gateway to learn about the wider world. Anyone with a princess obsessed four year old can imagine how this gift was received, sitting as it was next to a plastic tiara and pink plastic heels.
Therein lies my problem with what Disney has done to the princesses. Disney has taken the world canon of traditional stories told to children and they have flat-lined these stories, scrubbed them of all fear and potential peril, added some glitter, and reappropriated them for the purpose of selling pink plastic heels to three and four year old girls. And because of the proliferation and market domination of Disney, other toys and games and stories and potential manifestations of imaginative play get squeezed out.
So for right now, the “no princesses” rule remains in effect; because I am really enjoying seeing what she pretends to be when she isn’t presented with a slate of trademarked characters from which to choose.
