Inside The Cinderella Complex - The Curse Of The Fairytale Princess
Hearing a father call his daughter 'princess' has always made me wince. Long before I was blessed enough to bring a young life into this world, I have always thought the term to be a self-congratulatory, asinine catchphrase, that made me slightly queasy when I heard it.
Of course back then I hadn't really articulated the thoughts surrounding the term, I just knew that I couldn't stand to hear fathers calling their daughters 'little princess'.
A Princess For All Times
In 1997; after her tragic death, Tony Blair dubbed Princess Diana, the people's princess. I liked Diana, I liked the fact that she wasn't prepared to just sit by and be a royal baby factory whilst her husband slept with the person he actually loved.
I liked the fact that she took her sons to secret visits of homeless shelters, and hospitals, just so they could see the reality of life without their rose tinted glasses on.
I even liked the fact that she was about to marry somebody with brown skin, as that would clearly annoy the establishment, namely her racist ex-father-in-law.
Most of all though, I think I liked her because she broke the mould of what a princess should be. Which of course raises the interesting question of; where exactly; do we get our notions of what a princess should be like?
The Birth Of A Complex
Charles Perrault first wrote the classic tale Cinderella at the tail end of the 17th century, a little over 100 years later, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm took the story and gave it their own unique twist.
However one thing that hasn't changed about the Cinderella story is her utterly hopeless situation, which can only be redeemed by meeting a handsome young man that will take care of all her material needs forever more.
This was perhaps the sum of what a woman living in 1697, who had been born above the rank of peasant, yet below that of nobility, had to look forward to.
In those days women were treated as assets by their families, marrying someone you didn't care for, or perhaps even detested, in order to allow your family to climb a social ladder was commonplace.
Flipping The Cinderella Script
Being born male has meant the subtle subtext of stories like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, passed me by for most of my life.
However one day I had a baby daughter (or rather my wife did, I just stood around and watched through the veneer of mild panic), and at some point I started reading to her, and that's when I noticed the completely lame ass message that is woven into the whole princess genre.
Basically the message is; your life has no meaning until you get married, and not just to anyone, to somebody rich, important, and if you're lucky, handsome!
I want my daughter to grow up to be a warrior, a leader, a strong, thoughtful, caring, intelligent, critical thinking, independent woman. Not some doe-eyed dullard, waiting around to feel fulfilled by a mythical man who never arrives.
Luckily, I started reading these stories to her long before she herself could decipher the words on the page.
So I would subtly change the syntax of these tales from one of servitude and helplessness, to that of empowerment and independent thinking.
So instead of true love being the thing that woke Sleeping Beauty, it was actually an antidote coated on the lips of the Prince. Who wasn't actually a prince anymore, just a thoughtful young man.
Instead of Sleeping Beauty falling in love with the prince on first sight, and agreeing to marry him. She tells him that she is flattered by his offer, but that they have only just met. She is grateful for being woken from her curse, however she has plans to go to university, and so they agree to leave it a couple of years and reassess how they both feel about each other.
In my version of Cinderella, she realises that being a princess isn't all it's cracked up to be. So she decides to leave her weak father and cruel sisters to go and become a hedge fund manager.
The Future Of Now
So now my daughter is no longer obsessed with the idea of being, or even becoming a princess, I have taught her that waiting around for somebody who can put you in a position whereby you have to do nothing for the rest of your life, is actually a pretty depressing state of affairs.
In that respect, my darling little minigee knows that she will never, ever, not even for one nanosecond, be my little princess.
Further reading:
WHAT ABOUT YOU? ARE YOU A PARENT OF A GIRL WONDERING WHERE ALL THE POSITIVE STEREOTYPES ARE? OR PERHAPS YOU ARE A FEMALE WHO HAS FALLEN UNDER THE EVIL SPELL OF THE CINDERELLA COMPLEX? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
I find them very accurate. One day I will not say the princess that is definitely my daughter.
In an ash cat,
The divine touch touches the upper class with the lower class.
that great thing that will overcome everything, that is to say "love", thus comes out as a unifying element.
But the interesting thing is that this expectation does not happen.
This unifying love element does not happen without God's class jumper.
Basically the message is; Your life has no meaning until you get married.
not just one, rich, important one, and if you're lucky, handsome!
Their social position will change only after one of the upper class marries them. This is the effort of the middle and lower classes.
Moreover, it works through women, and in this respect it is also a patriarchal. Equality away, it is overwhelming.
the end of the fairy tale ends with the knowledge that they are "happy forever".
noble, the upper classes because they want to live forever "happy" stood for. Unhappiness and death are concepts of the oppressed. happiness and eternity are concepts related to the nobility.
At the same time it is a terrible fairy tale that sees racist and class distinctions.
Every daughter is a princess to every father and Every father is king to his daughter.
Well done sir, your articles are always deep and has meaning. I think the word princess is a lot more common than prince in some culture but in this part of the world I stay prince is the name that have such status. So it is a tale of two different worlds. Anyways I think your views on princess are well articulated. Maybe I Will try to write something on prince as well
good story with story story, I like it, I wait for your next posting ...
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Your daughter is an extremely fortunate young girl. To have a parent, especially a father, who actively reworks narratives that restrict what she can dream about becoming - that is a rare and priceless gift.
I'm not a parent but I grew up surrounded by ideas of how I should be - not from my parents, I was very lucky that way - but from relatives, school and friends. To be able to ignore all that, one needs a very firm core, a strong sense of who one is.
This is where parents can help. They can decide to limit and jail their children's potential to society's conventions, or they can equip the youngsters with the tools and the mentality to soar and be all they can be.
Cinderella complex is a woman’s hidden fear of independence; she needs a ‘prince’ to support her financially, emotionally and physically. (Basically being codependent)
Borderline is applicable for both men and women and goes way beyond codependency. It centers around the fear of abandonment and expresses itself in a completely distorted thought process due to disregulated emotions/thoughts as a result of trauma. Their nervous system basically sees everything as a ‘threath’ that could lead to abandonment and they translate their feelings into facts instead of other way around. This is completely mind blowing to a person that does not have or understand borderline. They basically acuse you all the time of things you did not do, but that are very real in their head.
That is an interesting article.
I think it all depends on our very own attachment we have to the label of 'princess'.
From my perspective a princess is a strong woman which shows responsibility for her life experience and helps others with all she has to give.
On Earth the label princess is rather negatively connotated as being a person that takes but doesn't give and moreover, a person that is weak and cannot defend herself.
In this Universe of Separation, Earth itself separates itself once more, causing somewhat a maximized Separation. Hence, almost anything we encounter here has been turned upside down. Many labels or principles which are considered divine in the Universe are somewhat denigrated on Earth to make us continue believe that everything is happening against us and not for us, that true Happiness doesn't exist...
Anyways, I digress. I hope you get my message! ;)