I’ve always hated princess movies. The whole being a male thing, I guess, to begin with. The only ones that were around when I was a boy where the old Disney “classics”: Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. Not that I had seen them even once before having girls, but I was aware of them. Aware of them as things I was never really interested in because they were quite stupid and annoying. Uninformed boy, yes, but sometimes an uninformed opinion rings quite true once you become all informed about the infernal thing in question.
Sophie loved princesses. I mean L-O-V-E. We would come back from Teacher Sarah’s Parent Participation and she would ask for Macaroni and Cheese and to change into a princess dress. Without fail. Usually the blue Cinderella one, the exact replica, along with the light blue glass slippers that were always too big for her, and then the begging would begin.
“Daddy can wash movie peas?”
“Yeah you can probably watch a little of one. What you wanna watch?”
“Cinderella!”
“Oh, Sophie, how about another one. You haven’t watched Finding Nem…”
“Daddy, Cinderella. Peas. Peas!”
It’s very difficult to argue with a four year old about a movie choice when they’re in costume, especially when it’s the costume for the movie they’re begging about. Impossible for me.
“OK, OK…”
“Why don’t you wanna wash it, daddy? Don’t you like it?”
And that was always the rub. I didn’t want to say no. I didn’t want to say yes. Either answer involved a lot more of the subject, either watching much more of it with her (unacceptable) or talking a lot more about it (the long line of interminable questions—Why don’t you like it? What’s a poor example mean? What do you mean Cinderella’s a dumb lazy bitch who doesn’t do anything for herself?”)
I had many conversations over the years with many Moms on the whole princess thing. They thought, nearly to a woman, that it was cute and an annoyance and not really a big deal. And that I was a freak, of course, for being bothered by it. Even when I broke it down that Princess movies were all about the pretty girl being a victim throughout the entire story, saved at the end by some stranger-prince that falls in love with her because she’s so pretty and princessy, and useless otherwise. Love at first sight! One of the biggest ruses of all and a gigantic part of the mystique of instant, true “love” that dooms girls to an impossible ideal, women to an impossible standard. There is no prince coming to save you. And if you’re sitting around just waiting for…
“That never happens,” I said during the dance at the ball scene, when their eyes meet. Off Cinderella and her prince go to fall immediately and madly in love during their private-time dance behind the curtain.
“Daddy!”
“I’m serious. You don’t meet someone for the first time and then run off and be in love. Especially with some dorky Prince.”
“Daddy stop it!”
So I would make white shell macaroni and cheese, and farmers market carrots with salt. Cinderella singing in the bathtub with the birds in the background, warbling with her perfect little voice under the bubbles of the shower as the birds and mice help wash and dry her in the background. Sophie would sit, enraptured by it all, in complete light blue Cinderella garb, sitting on her blow-up light blue Blue’s Clues chair. Not a vacant look, not that empty one that kids can get in front of TV where you can actually see the intelligence and creativity being sucked out their slightly agape mouths. No, this was pure wonder topped with longing and guileless jealousy, the unadulterated kind that only small children are allowed to possess. Wanting something someone else has, but not hating them for having it. Wanting to be Cinderella. Which only made me hate it all the more. I didn’t want to raise a damned Cinderella. She couldn’t do anything. Clean and sew and look pretty and be abused. Wait for good things to hopefully happen to her. Thanks magical fairy godmother who helped me out because I kept crying hard enough. I woulda never been able to get outta this mess on my own. Phew!
But who am I to crush her stupid dreams? Hopefully she’ll just crush them herself, or get bored of these impossible princess dreams on her own. I didn’t want her to hold on to them longer because I kept trying to take them from her, or even worse decide she hated them because I did. I wanted her to hate them for the right reasons. Mine. Which, I realized, was a ridiculously female way of surveying the situation. I want you to do the right thing (what I want you to do) because YOU want to, not because I do. Oy gevult, I was spending too much time around all these females. Not only was their nonsense making sense, now I was starting to use it myself.
“Daddy will you dance the dancy part wif me?” She asked, crunching her last little carrot. Cinderella’s horrid sisters were being introduced, the band was warming up… she knew it was coming.
“Sophie, I’ve got to…” Do anything. I’m sorry, baby girl but…
“Daddy peas. Just dis part.”
Again, only human male. Only so many ‘no’s I have in me in a day. My tiny daughter begging to dance with me is not one of them.
“So this is love…mmmm-mmmm-mmm-mmmmmm…”
What a ridiculous song. And twirl. Her favorite is the twirly part. Finally gets out of the house, meets the most wealthy and eligible bachelor in the entire country, and they fall instantly in love. To this idiotic song.
“So this is love…”
But Sophie is so happy and so cute and she can hardly step in her oversized glass slippers that don’t fit her tiny feet at all. So I just clasp her hands and she puts her feet on top of mine and I dance with her and smile at her and the movie plays on, as it has so many, many, many times, that it’s become like a soundtrack to my life.
“So this is the miracle, that I’ve been dreaming of…..” Yeah it’s a freaking miracle all right there, toots.
And I’m just steeped in it, with no need to start or stop it, because I know every goddamn note so well that somewhere in my brain the movie is constantly playing, some corner of the cave system always has Cinderella on. So I watch the end of it with her and she sits on my lap and I try not to think of all the horrible things this is doing to the little female I’m raising. Trying to keep from being hapless and helpless and needing to be pretty and waiting for Mr. Perfect to show up and not DOING, not making her own bold way in the world. What we’ve done to women, what silly things we’ve told them are the valuable parts about them. What we’ve told them they can and can’t do.
Thanks Walt Disney! He was the worst! Kill the mother right up front, torture the poor young, pretty female until some noble man gives her the time of day and deigns to save her. Blech! Boo! Hiss!
“Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong
-Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong”
The slipper had fit, the princess was found, and they were married! Sophie’s face turned to me in the brightest smile she had as the shiny new couple ran down the steps of the church and all her tiny animal friends threw rice.
“Dady dey got mawwied! Dey got mawwied!”
Cinderella stopped to give the King a forehead kiss on the way down the steps and out of town. His face turned deep red, as it did every time it turns out.
“Look, Daddy. He got mawwied too!”
She said that every time and I never corrected her. It was too wonderful of a misunderstanding. And maybe she was a little bit right.
But don’t get me started on that bitch Snow White. Her I definitely want to punch right in the face. And I’m not changing my mind about that one.