Opinion Why so many little girls still want to be princesses
And why it neednt raise your feminist hackles it comes from the simple desire to be the heroine of her own life
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The image looked so familiar there was the well-dressed young British woman,crouching down with a radiant smile. But this time it was Kate Middleton,Britains new princess. Like her much-mourned mother-in-laws nuptials,Kate Middletons wedding was fetishised,scrutinised and watched by millions around the globe,her ascension to princess status sprinkled with the stardust of glowing press. But isnt there something weirdly retro about the obsession with Kate Middleton as our new princess figure? Do we even need a princess job category when news events are grim,no one believes in fairy-tale endings and women no longer wait around to see if the glass slipper fits?
I would argue that the fascination with princesses is never,on one level,going to go away; but that the princess icon is changing. Any mother of a girl knows that at about 3 and 4 that girl is likely to intensely identify with princesses. She wants the tiara,the sparkly sceptre,the glittery shoes and the flouncy chiffon-skirted costume; she relates to the Disney princesses who swell the pantheon anew: Cinderella,whose tiny foot destines her for the throne; Anastasia,the secret princess whose regality was unknown even to herself; Belle,who is discovered by a prince trapped in the body of a Beast and elevated to princesshood. The second wave of feminism deconstructed the Sleeping Beauty narrative and other princess myths as a form of hypnotism,designed to seduce women into marriage and passivity,and structured to teach them that their real lives only began with the kiss of a prince. Even today,I meet right-on feminist moms horrified at the enduring appeal of this story to their egalitarian-raised kindergartners: Why,they ask me,is my daughter obsessed with being a princess?
I would tell them not to worry: Second-wave feminists have it wrong. If you look closely,the princess archetype is not about passivity and decorativeness: It is about power and the recognition of the true self. Little girls are obsessed with princesses for the same reason little boys are obsessed with action heroes. What other female role model can issue a sentence and have the world at her feet? Princesses are more benevolent than pop stars and less drugged out; they are more powerful than Hillary Rodham Clinton or Condoleezza Rice,and wear better frocks. They are less disposable than fashion models and at least appear to be less stressed than the girls own working mothers,even if those women are at the top of the professional hierarchy. What girl would not be drawn to such an archetype,given how few other female role models you can say that about in our popular culture?
More important than the real role of a princess is the archetypal,even Jungian role that the princess serves. After all,what are these Disney princesses doing? They are busy being the heroines of their own lives. In a scary face-off,Anastasia kills off the evil Rasputin and saves Russia. Mulan,in drag,helps defeat the conquering Huns also saving her family and her country. Belle releases her enslaved beloved from the curse of his enchantment. In The Princess Diaries,it is the Anne Hathaway characters inner strength and grace that her regal grandmother develops,not just her posture and beauty. Even that slightly annoying Cinderella from the 1950 animated film is not so bad if we see that the glass slipper fits because she is nice to little creatures and that it cannot fit her stepsisters not so much because they are ugly as because they are unkind. Interesting that when fables are filled with actual narratives of female power,assertion and heroism,they are still read as being about beauty and passivity. Dont worry if your five-year-old girl insists on a pink frilly princess dress. It doesnt mean she wants to subside into froth; it just means,sensibly enough for her,that she wants to take over the world.
Naomi Wolf is the author of The Beauty Myth,among other books
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