He's a Very Nice Prince

[CINDERELLA]
He's a very nice Prince.

[BAKER'S WIFE]
And-?

[CINDERELLA]
And-
It's a very nice ball.

[BAKER'S WIFE]
And-?

[CINDERELLA]
And-
When I entered they trumpeted.

[BAKER'S WIFE]
And-?
The Prince-?

[CINDERELLA]
Oh, the Prince...

[BAKER'S WIFE]
Yes, the Prince!

[CINDERELLA]
Well, he's tall.

[BAKER'S WIFE]
Is that all?

We all have ideals. Concepts in our heads that are perfect and next to which we compare everything that happens in our lives. "Prince Charming" is to every princess the concept next to which every guy will be compared.

[BAKER'S WIFE]
Did you dance?
Is he charming?
They say that he's charming.

[CINDERELLA]
We did nothing but dance.

[BAKER'S WIFE]
Yes-? And-?

[CINDERELLA]
And it made a nice change.

[BAKER'S WIFE]
No, the Prince!

[CINDERELLA]
Oh, the Prince...

[BAKER'S WIFE]
Yes, the Prince.

[CINDERELLA]
He has charm for a Prince, I guess...

[BAKER'S WIFE]
guess?

[CINDERELLA]
I don't meet a wide range.

It's an idea that has gotten quite the bit of critique lately. It has become a sort of fashion to blame fairy tales (and specifically, Walt Disney Animation Studios) for raising the expectations of gullible girls and gay boys to such levels that most males would rather just not try at all rather than spend a lifetime building the body of a Greek god while simultaneously becoming the ultimate genius renaissance man.

[BAKER'S WIFE]
Did he bow?
Was he cold and polite?

[CINDERELLA]
And it's all very strange.

[BAKER'S WIFE]
Did he speak? Did he flirt?
Could you tell right away he was royalty?
Is he sensitive,
Clever,
Well-mannered,
Considerate,
Passionate,
Charming,
As kind as he's handsome,
As wise as he's rich,
Is he everything you've ever wanted?

But so much of what the Prince Charming ideal is includes what we want it to include. It's like Cinderella and everyone thinking that she wants to marry the Prince in the first place. She doesn't, all that she wants is to go to the ball. It's us that want her to marry the prince, because we feel she deserves it.

[CINDERELLA]
But how can you know what you want
Till you get what you want
And you see if you like it?

As far as my Prince Charming is concerned, he is beyond perfect. He's an ideal I've worked on ever since I started storytelling to myself and I pretty much started doing that when I was able to form coherent sentences. It's evolved in such a way that it isn't one ideal, but several, each fitting a specific moment or mood. Some of them only existed for a specific chapter in my life. Some of them borrow heavily from real people and others from characters in books and movies. What all of them have in common is that they all know exactly what I need.

[BAKER'S WIFE]
Would I know?

[CINDERELLA]
All I know is-

[BAKER'S WIFE]
I never wish-

[CINDERELLA]
What I want most of all-

[BAKER'S WIFE]
Just within reason.

[CINDERELLA]
Is to know what I want.

How can I make sense of a guy that is, in fact, many guys? How can I have ideals that contradict one another? How can my needs be so different from one moment to the next that I can't come up with a character that can cope with them without becoming more than one character? How can I enter a relationship with a real person when I can't trust myself to keep my ideas from one moment to the next?

[BAKER'S WIFE]
When you know you can't have what you want,
Where's the profit in wishing?

Whenever someone tells me to get over my Prince Charming ideal and "give a guy a chance" I feel as if I'm being asked to lower my standards at the same time I'm disrespecting whoever I'm giving said chance to.

[BOTH]
He's a very nice Prince...

I don't feel that ignoring what and who my Prince Charming is in favor of whatever guy is around will do me any good, really. My Prince Charming could be a very clear image of what I want, and to turn my back on him would be to ignore what I feel I need. My Prince Charming, after all, is also an extension of me and not a fantasy waiting to come to life. He is part what I expect of others and part what I expect of me in the context of a relationship.

You have to look behind the fairy tale to understand it. Under the fantasy there is a hidden truth, and in order to find it you need to submerge yourself in it.

Lyrics from Into the Woods

Princess-like

Let's talk about something I've been avoiding for a while, and that is the name for this blog.

"Princess" has been a self-given title of myself for quite a while. I might not have called myself one in public until last year, but that doesn't mean I didn't see myself as one. Most of my make-believe games while growing up had me being one, as long as I played with myself (while playing with others, I didn't even try for a "prince" title). And my fascination with princesses comes mainly from the place where most girls got their self-deluded idea of royalty as well: Disney.

Nostalgia Chick did a pretty good video on the whole Disney Princess phenomenon. And it's important to mention that the Disney Princess line was sort of an afterthought after one of the honchos at Disney realized that girls really bought into the whole idea (the word "bought" there also refers to how much money they and/or their parents spent on the idea). For me, the Disney Princess was less a merchandise (probably because there were (or are) no items marketed for boys) and more an ideal. Disney Princesses might've started as complex stories of Damsels In Distress (Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty), but I grew up with the ones that would fight for what they wanted. I'd finally find my One True Princess with Belle.

Belle was well-read, snarky, and would wear one of the best dresses ever worn by a princess. She was brave, curious, and the kind of boy I wanted to be when I turned 18.

Yes, boy, for you see, it never occurred to me that Princess had a gender limit. As far as I cared at the time, the only difference between Belle and I was that she was a girl and I was a boy and just as Adam (or the Beast, for those of you who do not know the Beast's name) saw her for who she truly was and loved her, someone would do the same with me. I was as sure of being a boy, as I was sure of being a Princess.

Some years later, Cuarón's A Little Princess would come out in movie theaters, and she would deliver onto me (us) the following line.

Miss Minchin: Don't tell me you still fancy yourself a princess? Child, look around you! Or better yet, look in the mirror.
(dramatic pause goes here)
Sara Crewe: I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren't pretty, or smart, or young. They're still princesses. All of us.

Yes. All of us. Even the ones who are boys.

Sadly, not long after this (which is an event that would later have me wanting to become a filmmaker) I had to face the real world. The real world had very definite standards when it came to its princesses, and I did not even begin to fit any of them.

While the fantasy became silent, it did not become absent. Sometimes things about ourselves that are hidden take on far more power than those that we do acknowledge. The Princess factor in my case sort of helped me through all of my jr. high and high school drama. It was an escape.

It would take until college to retake the whole Princess ideal. What is it? What does it mean for me? How does it affect me and those around me? Am I really a princess?

As the title of this blog might've told you, yes, I do still see myself as Princess-like. At first I commented it among friends as a joke, but it began gaining momentum in my own subconscious. I began to question what it meant to be a Princess, and how my being a male affected it.

My main issue was based on the idea that what is feminine is weak. A Princess can be a strong female figure, but to put any sort of feminine characteristic on a male ideal is to weaken it. Being a feminine boy, I was no stranger to people thinking of me as weak. The only answer to this, I was told, is to become more male (tougher, stronger, less sensitive). But that to me would've meant creating a mask. Strength is not real strength unless it comes from who you are.

But then I realized that for all it's chest-pounding bravado the idea of what is to be "a man" is fueled a lot by fear. Being "a man" is a lot more about what you don't do than what you actually do. So by forgoing that fear I was actually brave and strong. Putting on a mask would only give a face to my fears, showing myself as I am would be to deny fear an entryway.

Right now, what being a Princess means for me is to try and know yourself. It means to keep a sense of wonder about the world. It means to try and be kind to everyone. It means to focus not on the problem at hand but on how to solve it. It means not to underestimate yourself.

I am a Princess, and I say that only half-jokingly.