Pretty Pretty Princess

I’m pretty sure it will start with Princesses. Princess books, princess dresses, Disney princess movies. Snow White, Cinderella, Jazmin, Ariel. Then my daughter will begin to request princess bedtime stories — which I will have to make up. I’ll spend a lot of time telling stories about average-sized princesses with short hair, who only wear jeans and who have special skills like a black belt in karate and the ability to think for themselves. The stories will not involve princes – handsome or otherwise. I may do a lesbian princess though, just to add a little romance.

I predict that one day I will be on princess overload from reading/watching/hearing the above mentioned princess propaganda. I will be putting my daughter to bed in her princess pajamas and she will ask for just one more princess story – about Snow White perhaps. Before I can even think about the coveted Mother of the Year award I will say, "Snow White can suck it." And I will mean it. Not only will I lose Mother of the Year, but my daughter will cry and wail about how she loves princesses, and princesses are nice and pretty, and how she wants to be a princess.

All because of my one minor lapse in judgment and my one princess insult, my daughter will fixate on princesses for years to come. She will dress like them for Halloween, she will draw them with crayons, she will hang posters of them on her wall. Eventually, this phase will turn into fixation with the modern day princess: the Cheerleader. Suddenly, she will want to cheer instead of play soccer. She’ll start watching her weight at age ten. She’ll flat iron her hair and want to take make-up lessons. With her friends she’ll be bubbly and giggly. With me she will be quiet and vaguely angry. She’ll say "what-ever" a lot and her main form of communication will be the eye roll. She’ll want to wear dresses and heels. She will be embarrassed of me in public and at home.

All the years we each spend in therapy, apart and together, will all eventually lead back to the Snow White can suck it comment. We will have a breakthrough moment in a family therapy session in which I tearfully admit that when I was in kindergarten I wanted to either be a princess or a hamster, confusing what I wanted to be with what I wanted to have. And I will admit, that even though Snow White isn’t a lesbian or even very smart, she has a pretty dress and a cool tiara.


Author: Joslyne Decker