Photo

Entire books have been written about the negative impact of the “princess ideal” on girls and young women. And for good reason: standard princess tropes teach girls that their value is in their beauty and femininity, and that the best thing they could possibly dream of is to be saved by a handsome prince. Dig deeper and the messages get worse: beauty and goodness are always young and almost always white-skinned. Older, “ugly” and/or darker-skinned women – especially ones with power – are out to get you. Queer people don’t exist. Men are sometimes clueless or poorly behaved, but never the enemy. If you’re pretty and pure enough (and you’re not already a royal yourself), you can marry into the 1%. Which is inherently a good thing, never requiring soul-killing compromises or oppressing anyone else. So, when a princess comes along with the potential to subvert all that, it’s worth a notice. When two arrive in the same month, it’s downright shocking. I can count only two-and-a-half Action Princesses ever to star in their own big-budget vehicles on US screens: my beloved Diana Prince, 1980s merchandising dream She-Ra, and (though only sort of) Xena: Warrior Princess. (For the record: Xena’s not actually a princess by birth or station. She’s a nasty warlord when we first meet her in the Hercules series, and only gets slapped with the “Princess” title card when she decides to repent for her ways by becoming a do-gooder. Because one thing princesses – even ones who aren’t really princesses – can never do is be bad, at all, in any way.) How subversive are these new Action Princesses? Well, like Wonder Woman and She-Ra (but unlike more traditional princesses), our two newcomers both star in stories that refuse to make marriage any part of their happy ending. And both have it better than their elders in one key way: we never see their cleavage. (via From Snow White to Brave: the evolution of the Action Princess | Jaclyn Friedman | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk)