My Foray Into The World of The Disney Princess

Sparkle Princess Powers, Activate!I've been thinking about the Disney Princesses and the color pink a lot.  And why isn't Tinkerbell part of the Disney Princess line?  Not being a parent, I didn't even know there WAS an official Disney Princess lineup, but you can find all of them here on Disney's website.

Note how they never look at each other.  That's part of the official Disney code. Let that page load up, then watch it for a few minutes.  Notice how each princess fidgets a little bit, to get your attention.  A little eerie, is it not?  And yet, not half as eerie as it ought to be.

On the "pro" side for princesses is the - so far as I know - universal-among-little-girls understanding that a princess is:

1. pretty, and
2. the boss of you.  

Is it so wrong to believe yourself to be pretty?  I think not.  And there are worse things you can teach a little girl than to be bossy.  Just look at the Bratz dolls!  Wait; don't.

On the "con" side of princesses is the universal-among-princess-stories belief that Some Day My Prince Will Come.  That a man will ultimately be responsible for your happiness, swoop down from the skies on his white charger and rescue you from your miserable life.  And all you can do is wait him out.  Keep spinning that silk into gold, and wait him out.

This is a pernicious belief, one that survives well into adulthood, where it is propagated by a million billion movies and romance novels.  (I'm not picking on romance novels, which can be perfectly awesome.  But in a fair amount of them, The Man does swoop in and save The Woman from misery.)  And the Twilight series, of course.

(It also overlooks the historical truth, which is that princesses were as a rule child brides forced into bearing children in order to perpetuate a monastic line, frequently against their wills.)

Back to the Disney Princess home page.  I see that an African-American princess is front and center, which is a nice change.  I clicked through and learned that her name is "Tiana," and she is the star of Disney's take on "The Princess And The Frog."

I also learned that I was exceptionally smart and talented for having "revealed the secret picture" by moving my mouse back and forth over the picture.  And that the pink X says "Close" when you mouse over it.  Actually, I know a lot of people who could use this level of computer training.  I have had people ask me what the red X in the upper right-hand corner is for.  Maybe next time I'll send them to Disney Princess to learn a few things.

Then I clicked on Princess Aurora, because I didn't know who the heck she was, and I clicked Play so she'd tell me her story, but I got creeped out that she was staring somewhere off to my left while she was talking to me.  So that mystery remains unsolved.

One thing I couldn't help noticing as I navigated the sticky sweet world of Disney Princess, is that the prince is nowhere to be found.  Regardless of what happens in the movies, once you turn off the DVD player, it is all about the princess herself.  

Who among us doesn't want to be saved from their misery in one fell swoop?  But the belief is corrosive.  The truth is that we are all princesses, and we must each save ourselves.