Hearing a father call his daughter 'princess' has always made me wince. Long before I was blessed enough to bring a young life into this world, I have always thought the term to be a self-congratulatory, asinine catchphrase, that made me slightly queasy when I heard it.
Of course back then I hadn't really articulated the thoughts surrounding the term, I just knew that I couldn't stand to hear fathers calling their daughters 'little princess'.
A Princess For All Times
In 1997; after her tragic death, Tony Blair dubbed Princess Diana, the people's princess. I liked Diana, I liked the fact that she wasn't prepared to just sit by and be a royal baby factory whilst her husband slept with the person he actually loved.
I liked the fact that she took her sons to secret visits of homeless shelters, and hospitals, just so they could see the reality of life without their rose tinted glasses on.
I even liked the fact that she was about to marry somebody with brown skin, as that would clearly annoy the establishment, namely her racist ex-father-in-law.
Most of all though, I think I liked her because she broke the mould of what a princess should be. Which of course raises the interesting question of; where exactly; do we get our notions of what a princess should be like?
The Birth Of A Complex
Charles Perrault first wrote the classic tale Cinderella at the tail end of the 17th century, a little over 100 years later, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm took the story and gave it their own unique twist.
However one thing that hasn't changed about the Cinderella story is her utterly hopeless situation, which can only be redeemed by meeting a handsome young man that will take care of all her material needs forever more.
This was perhaps the sum of what a woman living in 1697, who had been born above the rank of peasant, yet below that of nobility, had to look forward to.
In those days women were treated as assets by their families, marrying someone you didn't care for, or perhaps even detested, in order to allow your family to climb a social ladder was commonplace.
Flipping The Cinderella Script
Being born male has meant the subtle subtext of stories like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, passed me by for most of my life.
However one day I had a baby daughter (or rather my wife did, I just stood around and watched through the veneer of mild panic), and at some point I started reading to her, and that's when I noticed the completely lame ass message that is woven into the whole princess genre.
Basically the message is; your life has no meaning until you get married, and not just to anyone, to somebody rich, important, and if you're lucky, handsome!
I want my daughter to grow up to be a warrior, a leader, a strong, thoughtful, caring, intelligent, critical thinking, independent woman. Not some doe-eyed dullard, waiting around to feel fulfilled by a mythical man who never arrives.
Luckily, I started reading these stories to her long before she herself could decipher the words on the page.
So I would subtly change the syntax of these tales from one of servitude and helplessness, to that of empowerment and independent thinking.
So instead of true love being the thing that woke Sleeping Beauty, it was actually an antidote coated on the lips of the Prince. Who wasn't actually a prince anymore, just a thoughtful young man.
Instead of Sleeping Beauty falling in love with the prince on first sight, and agreeing to marry him. She tells him that she is flattered by his offer, but that they have only just met. She is grateful for being woken from her curse, however she has plans to go to university, and so they agree to leave it a couple of years and reassess how they both feel about each other.
In my version of Cinderella, she realises that being a princess isn't all it's cracked up to be. So she decides to leave her weak father and cruel sisters to go and become a hedge fund manager.
The Future Of Now
So now my daughter is no longer obsessed with the idea of being, or even becoming a princess, I have taught her that waiting around for somebody who can put you in a position whereby you have to do nothing for the rest of your life, is actually a pretty depressing state of affairs.
In that respect, my darling little minigee knows that she will never, ever, not even for one nanosecond, be my little princess.
Further reading:
WHAT ABOUT YOU? ARE YOU A PARENT OF A GIRL WONDERING WHERE ALL THE POSITIVE STEREOTYPES ARE? OR PERHAPS YOU ARE A FEMALE WHO HAS FALLEN UNDER THE EVIL SPELL OF THE CINDERELLA COMPLEX? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!