Ballgowns and Boas: Let Girls Be Real Princesses Again

 In the basement of my family’s first house, there was a closet filled with all types of costumery, from faux raccoon hats for when we played frontiersmen to puffy pink ballgowns for when, more frequently, my sister and I played princesses. Long hours were spent devising elaborate stories for these princesses; quite often, our brothers would don chain mail and swords and rescue us from dragons or towers. Faux tea parties and royal proceedings wiled away the hours with as much splendor as crowds of adoring stuffed animals could muster. As we got older, our stories became more complex. One of us would be the princess and the other would be a servant answering every beck and call. We pretended to be Cinderellas and Sleeping Beauties and at one time, we even enacted the story of Princess Elisabeth of Hungary.

Just as often as we were playing princesses, we were reading about princesses. Favorites included the Sissi books, collections of fairy tales and contes, The Lord of the Rings’ Eowyn and Arwen, The Princess and the Kiss, Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy, and dozens of other stories we found throughout the years. Our lives as girls were steeped in playing royalty and in imitating the virtues they exhibited– kindness, charity, joy, propriety. And we were not alone in these daydreams– for every girl desires to be a princess, not because a princess is rich and powerful and has coffers upon coffers of jewels and hundreds of dresses  (our princesses were limited to the few dresses in circulation at any given time), but because they are blissful and generous and beloved by their subjects. A princess, at least in the stories we were reading, embodied virtue, the same way an Arthurian knight was the chivalric idea for a young boy. They carried baskets of bread to the poor and spent hours praying or playing with orphan children; at the same time, they entertained their households and guests, took care of their own appearance and were attentive to the arts and letters. Their attraction for us was the virtue they exhibited, because as children, we saw that it was good. We too wanted to be good and so we wore crowns and acted as princesses did. And actions leading to habits, it was ingrained in us through our own play why charity was important and how to best practice that in the real world; or why it was imperative to be kind and how one went about treating people; or how integral manners and comportment were and how to behave in public situations. It was the play-acting where we adopted manners to the extreme– pinky up at tea and fancy accents– that taught us what the proper manners for real situations were. For having become so comfortable with the most stringent of tea party etiquette, any normal one was easy to navigate. Furthermore,  it emphasized our identities as daughters of the King, that is princesses of God– again, much in the same ways boys identify as knights or princes of God, giving us a sense of worth as Christian children. “Playing princesses” helped  us grow in virtue and solidified our faith. Is there anything more one can ask from childhood games?

Yet, today, princesses have fallen out of style. At least, that is, virtuous princesses. We are more inundated than ever with rebellious princesses, with princesses far more interested in their individual goals and desires than in the good of their subjects, with princesses shirking duty and being ungrateful. Truly, there is no shortage of bad depictions of princesses for girls to imitate. Furthermore, the word “princess” has developed negative connotations in today’s society– it is used to insult girls for taking pride in their appearance, for being overly well-mannered or gentle, for being sensitive or being a little pampered. None of these are bad things, but in modern society which has striven to erase the softer elements of womanhood, they have become synonymous with insufficiency. They are villanized for being just girls, and they are especially villanized for being princesses, despite the fact that good manners, a discerning taste, and the wish to appear well-manicured are enriching for society. The results are entirely what one would expect from such a change in the meaning of a “princess.” No longer are they models of virtue, but models of rebellion. No longer do they teach magnaminity but selfishness; not responsibility but self-indulgence; not goodwill, but self-interest. If these are the aspirations we have for girls and young women, then we have given them fine role models that will serve them well. However, if we wish for girls to grow in beatitude, then we must bring about the return of the true princess.

For the princess teaches the girl how to be and serves the same formative role as a knight or a cowboy does for the boy. Princesses have always existed as examples for girls to follow: setting the tone for how a real woman ought to behave in her daily life, learned through years of make-believe as a child. Girls desire the crown of virtues: by providing them with princesses, we offer them the best tool to develop the habits. Letting girls explore the meaning of liberality and cheerfulness, integrity and honor, through princesses satisfies both their imaginations and their practical education. We wish for our girls to grow up to be princesses of the Heavenly Kingdom, daughters of God. Is there a better way to raise them to fulfill this role than by giving them good princesses to pretend being?