It’s Okay To Be A Princess

By: Cathryn Michon

Since the Royal Wedding of William and Kate, there have been increasingly shrill alarms sounded by the kind of professional scolds who write parenting books and who know one thing for sure: Nothing gets anxious mothers to shell out money for a hardcover parenting book like increasingly shrill alarms.

According to these books, we’re all supposed to be terribly concerned that little girls like to wear sparkly tiaras and pink poofy dresses, instead of dressing up like lawyers and doctors who, let’s be honest, don’t dress that cute unless they are lawyers and doctors on TV shows.

In her bestselling (and terrifyingly titled) book Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Girly Girl Culture, author Peggy Orenstein anxiously muses whether or not the 4 billion dollar a year Disney Princess industry is sending this bad message to girls: “The only way to happiness is by marrying some rich man who turns you into a Princess.”

To which I say: Peggy Orenstein is a big mean spoilsport who obviously never got a sparkly tiara and is trying to ruin everyone’s fun.

How come there is no corresponding book out there for parents with the equally terrifying title, Superman Talked My Son Into Jumping Off a Building: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Gravity Defying Macho Boy Culture? How come we don’t worry about boys having increasingly unrealistic expectations from the superhero fantasies marketed to them? How come we don’t worry about boys wearing tights and capes, which let’s face it, will present a lot more social problems in future life than a poofy skirt and a tiara if they don’t grow out of it?

I think it’s because dads know better, and would never buy that book. Apparently men know that harmless childhood fantasies are just that, harmless. Men and women all hope that their children will grow up to be Nobel prize winning physicists, but really, do you have to make your kid dress up like one for Halloween? It’s neither festive nor scary to wear unfashionable corduroy pants, crooked glasses and uncombed hair.

The people who want us to give our girls more “realistic fantasies” clearly don’t understand that fantasies are by their very nature not realistic. That is, after all, the whole point.

Girls fantasize about having the superpower of being so girly that everyone caters to their every whim and they can get all the fancy outfits they want. Boys fantasize about the superpower of being so manly that they can fly or spin titanium strength spider webs out of their fingers.

None of these kids is going to have any of this stuff actually happen to them of course, but for some reason, everyone is only worried about the ridiculous fantasies of the girls.

And all of this “Princess Paranoia” went into diamond encrusted overdrive during The Royal Wedding of Kate and William. All of the pundits (with books to sell) were terribly concerned that young girls everywhere who were previously planning to be Presidents of countries, or curers of cancer, would now hurl all their ambitious energies into trying to become Princesses.

These professional killjoys felt the need to point out that there aren’t in fact that many job openings for “Princess” and that, not to put too fine a point on it, the most famous of them seem to end up dying in car crashes (with Princess Diana and Princess Grace, we’re two for two on that one).

There is no question that there is no equally compelling “Prince” fantasy for young boys. Even those boys who long to be rock stars have to settle for now imagining themselves as “The Artist Formerly Known As” rather than just plain old, “Prince”.

So, OK, I will agree that wanting to be a Princess is a) strictly a chick thing; and b) not that frigging likely to happen for you. But my response to this is, “So what?”

Perhaps the closest equivalent male-only fantasy to a Royal Wedding is The Superbowl. Being in The Superbowl is a) strictly a guy thing; and b) not that frigging likely to happen for you.

Two billion (or so) people watched the Royal Wedding of William and Kate, but Royal Weddings only happen every twenty years or so. 100 million (or so) people watch the Superbowl, but sadly we seem to have them every damn year. So as wildly unrealistic gender specific fantasy broadcasts go, I accurately calculate* The Royal Wedding and The Superbowl have precisely the same number of viewers per two decades, give or take ten or twenty million.

*Using the form of math that most proves my point which is, again: “So what?”

I am a lifelong Princess junkie, and I watched every royal wedding that was ever broadcast, and yet I have managed to earn a living in a highly competitive male-dominated business. Cinderella didn’t eat me, perhaps the worst she did was instill in me a love of beautiful shoes. Anyone who says I was held back by loving Princesses can Google me and kiss my tiara, because I’m doing just fine.

Though I am not a parent, I am a proud Godmother to three very girly girls. All three of my beloved girls called themselves Princesses and had the outfits and shoes to back up their claims, many of which were purchased for them by me, an unapologetically girly girl. My girls watched princess movies and read princess stories and slept on princess sheets in their princess pajamas.

It may not be a scientific sample, but I am happy to report that all three of them are now high achieving teenage girls who are smart, hard-working, brave, athletic and ambitious. One competes on three different soccer teams, one is a freshman in college studying to be a geologist, and the third is learning to fly on a trapeze.

Frankly, I blame Superman for that one.

Cathryn Michon

 

Cathryn Michon is an award-winning actress, author, stand-up comic and filmmaker. She’s the star of the upcoming   film “Cook-Off!” and the author of the bestselling “Grrl Genius Guide” book series. She’s also the screenwriter (along with her husband W. Bruce Cameron) of the film “A Dog’s Purpose” produced by Dreamworks Studios.