Let's Open With Princesses

Hello there. Welcome to my web log. Now, to begin with, I have a smallish confession to make: I have no idea what I'm doing. Oh, sure, I have a thousand enthusiastic and/or embittered rants to turn into posts and no shortage of willingness to turn an Internet webpage into a public diary. I'm really only intimidated by the rather complex layout of the website and rather in doubt about my ability to make my posts look presentable. Not that I'm expecting a ton of people to be reading this.....

But you're not here to read about my myriad insecurities and technological shortcomings. You're here to read about stuff. And trust me, this blog should have no shortage of stuff. And, as should have been suggested by the title of this post, the stuff to be discussed in this post is: princesses!

Have you ever noticed the strange nature of our society's fascination with princesses? Little girls (and some older ones) (like me) love watching Disney's princess movies. Plenty of emotional women and very..... um..... special men have obsessions with England's past and present princesses. Kate. Diana. Victoria. Both Elizabeths. We love them, which I find to be a rather funny trait in Americans, since we totally lost our princess-watching privileges when we told Britain to shove off back in the 1770s. Luckily Britain's pretty forgiving (possibly because we've developed a new reputation for allying with them during pesky worldwide wars).

Meanwhile, there's a whole other, ever-widening pool of people, most of them feminists, mothers, or feminist mothers, who say that princesses set bad examples for young girls, telling them that if they're thin and beautiful and dress a certain way they'll find their handsome princes and live happily ever after.

I, for one, still really like princess movies and see absolutely nothing wrong with them. Little girls are a lot smarter than we give them credit for; or at least, the ones I know are. Disney princess movies are fun to watch because they're musical and colorful and have fabulous villains (note: if you start following this blog, you'll probably see a post or two just about villains; yes, I'm one of those girls). True, I tend to dislike the princesses themselves, but oftentimes the movies are great. I even find myself torn on my opinion of The Little Mermaid, which features my least favorite Disney "heroine" (chances are you'll be hearing more about her), yet still contains Disney's renowned quality in songs, visuals, and side characters. And historical princess movies (like the ones about Victoria and the Elizabeths and Diana and an upcoming one about Grace Kelly) (eep!) tend to be entertaining as well as informative.

That about does it. Thanks for reading. I'm guessing and hoping that the writing and direction of my posts will improve overtime (meaning I think this one's rather rambly and pointless) (yeah, I know, again with the insecurities). I thrive on feedback, by the way.

Sincerely,
Pearl Clayton