Princesses are cool!

Lately on GeekMom, Jezebel, Meg Cabot, etc. have been talking about princesses, prompted by Disney's announcement that they are not going to do any more princess movies. There has been much discussion about princesses, princess culture, princess movies, princess books, if boys will watch princess movies, etc., etc., etc.

Personally, I don't see what the big fuss is about princesses. I grew up with princess movies as did most people my age. My favorite movies when I was little were Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid. I can name the favorite princess of all of my female friends (mine was Little Mermaid because having fins would be cool and Eric was hot), but most of my guy friends also know all of the princesses. It is a bit of a stigma now that princesses are for girls, but I really don't know many people who haven't seen the major Disney princess movies. Sure, princess culture tends to be for girls, but movies like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, or even more recent movies like The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, and Enchanted have a broad appeal. I watched Enchated a ton in college, mostly with guys. So...the argument that boys won't watch princess movies is bogus.

Next argument...and the one that is the biggest debate in feminist blogs...princess culture. There seems to be this idea that if little girls watch movies with princesses in them that they will wait around to be rescued by a guy...or something like that. I'm really not quite sure because there are only a couple movies that I can think of that have a rescue element to them, namely Snow White and Sleeping Beauty who need kisses to be awoken (which is weird on a whole other level...). But like, Cinderella...she goes to the ball on her own; Belle rescues the Beast, Princess Tatiana definitely rescues the frog prince, and Giselle decides that she doesn't want to be rescued. I suppose it is more the "do something radical for a guy" a la grow legs like Ariel. But even that, there ends up being the lesson that if the guy is really for you, he will like you even after he knows that you are a mermaid or a maid or smart or whatever.

As I earlier, I grew up on princess movies, but I never aspired to be a princess. Just like watching Rookie of the Year didn't make me aspire to play baseball, Tom and Huck didn't inspire me to fake my own death and attend my own funeral, and The Three Musketeers didn't make me want to kill a Cardinal all in the name of France. I think people don't give kids enough credit for knowing what is and isn't real. Sure, my sister and I acted our princess scenes with our Barbies, but we did that a lot less than we played Star Wars, with Barbies and full out. And while I sometimes liked to play Ariel or Belle, mostly I liked playing Star Wars because I always got to be Luke!

And how could being a princess be bad when you have Princess Leia as a role model! I mean, talk about badass! She is the one who rescues Han, Luke, and Chewie from the Stormtroopers, she single-handedly saves the rebel alliance by hiding stuff in R2, and she totally rocks by getting the Ewoks involved in taking down the Empire.

I like princess movies because they are kind of like chick lit on screen. They have a formulaic plot, a happy ending, lots of fun drama in the middle, and a fun heroine to root for. I don't know that Disney necessarily needs to have more princesses right now, since there are soooo many at the moment...I always really liked the movies with cool guys like Aladdin, Hercules, and the Lion King and think there should be more of those...but I don't think princesses are bad. Everyone likes to be able to fall into a story and have fun acting it out later. And trust me, most kids are smart enough to realize fairly early on that they aren't real.