Since there doesn't seem to be any way to totally block the absorption of princess culture via daycare osmosis, I've taken to explaining to Matilda that a princess has to be try her hardest to be smart, kind and brave, because a princess will someday be a queen and have a whole country to take care of, and queens who are stupid or mean or wicked tend to get eaten by dragons or tumble down rocky crevasses in the middle of a howling storm. The only bratty princesses are wicked stepsisters, and they too tend to get eaten, or turned into stone or sometimes merely banished for life.

When I was a wee Teppy, I had a book called, quite naturally, The Princess Book, which is full of stories about smart, brave, funny, resourceful, kick-ass princesses.

Here's the introduction:

"Many princesses are pink and pretty and protected. They don't have much to do, really, except gaze out tower windows, sew fine seams, or comb their long, golden locks. But then there are other princesses—princesses like those in The Princess Book.

"In this collection of nine stories, there is a princess for every mood or occasion. One princess races about in wild pursuit of cheese-napping mice. Another manages to look beautiful, even in a patchwork gown. A princess made of paper cleverly breaks a wicked curse, while still another outsmarts a powerful, bad-tempered North Wind."

Of course I still have it.

tummy~ma, Kristin!

I've got buffistas in my kitchen! Well, technically you're in the laundry room because the entire kitchen is a splash zone when I'm cooking. I'm making roast beef with purple potatoes, baby onions, carrots, mushrooms and thyme.

Oooh, thanks, Tep! Added it to her Amazon wish list (not that I ever ask anyone to buy anything from Amazon; I just point family members there and tell them to get something off the list at a local independent bookstore, because I'm all lefty and crunchy like that). I totally remember reading and loving lots of similar princess stories in Cricket when I was a kid.

Vaguely relatedly, I've been obsessed for the last few weeks with a fairy tale I'd never ever heard before, Kate Crackernuts. I'm just smitten with a story of a beautiful princess with a wicked stepmother and an ugly stepsister, where the ugly stepsister not only doesn't take part in the stepmother's sabotage, but runs away with her beautiful accursed sister, finds a way to break the curse, and rescues a prince while she's at it.

My mom knows a bunch of children's book illustrators in the area, and I've been badgering her to talk to one of them about working on a picture-book edition, but she hasn't done it yet. Dammit! It's the most excellent fairy tale nobody's ever heard of!

Heh. Yep, those ugly stepsisters so rarely catch a break.

For the old fairy-tales especially, it's always pretty=good and ugly=evil, right?

Disney Princesses Deconstructed

(They're cherry-picking. Mulan is an example of an ass-kicking Disney Princess)

Disney Princes Deconstructed

I always liked the book Don't Bet on the Prince, a collection of feminist fairy tales, with one section for tales for younger readers, one for adults, and one section for literary criticism. It was edited by Jack Zipes, who also edited a terrific collection of Grimm's fairy tales which I have at home.

(They're cherry-picking. Mulan is an example of an ass-kicking Disney Princess)

And Belle has more assets than her sexuality! She reads books! And is kind to teacups!

and don't forget The Paperbag Princess.

[link]

Disney Princesses Deconstructed

(They're cherry-picking. Mulan is an example of an ass-kicking Disney Princess)

Also, that's a severe misreading of Beauty and the Beast, for both Belle and Beast. I got no gripe at all with the deconstructions of the earlier princesses (though, oh, God, is the artwork and animation in Snow White just ravishingly beautiful).

(The Boy Who Broke My Heart, years ago, worked for a game company in LA designing an adventure game with a female lead, and got to see all the initial sketches submitted by various LA-area artists. One was a very, very elderly man who had worked on Snow White; TBWBMH said the style could not possibly have been more wrong for a game character, but that it was also the most beautiful drawing he'd ever seen.)

Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots is our favorite princess book.