The current stable (and I use the term deliberately) of Disney Princesses have the following to be proud of:
Friends of mine lament that their daughter's greatest ambition is to be a Princess and 'Princessification' has become a hot button topic for all kinds of feminist ranting against pink, ruffles and 'girly' marketing .+
I’ve always wanted to be a Princess and I think I turned out just fine, so I really don't see Princessification as a problem. Not if you model yourself on the right kind of princess anyway - see since the age of four I have tried to live my life by one pretty simple guiding principle:
Generally, the answer is have great hair and kick some ass, but can also include any or all of the following:
Withstand torture
Cinderella may have had to get up with the sun, serve breakfast to her horrible step family, scrub floors all day and live out her dreams of producing high end couture by forcing her creations onto vermin, but she wouldn't have lasted 30 seconds against the IT-O Interrogator.
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Seriously – go read the Wookiepedia entry on this thing . Leia not only withstands an hour of torture, she doesn't give away any useful information or put herself at risk of contracting Hantavirus just to make a few friends.
Fight the battles you can win |
You're being held captive by a respectable percentage of the Imperial Army on a self-sustaining space station. You've just watched your home planet get blown up. Do you:
a. Give in and tell them what they want to know as long as they let you live?
b. Cry, scream and smash things in an attempt to take the Death Star down?
c. Make a futile attempt to kill the man responsible while standing next to someone capable of killing you just by thinking about it?
d. Get some sleep, plot revenge and have a snarky greeting ready for your idiot sibling.*
Rescue Yourself. Also known as ‘You came in here, didn't you have a plan for getting out?’
Some of you might insist that Leia is rescued by Luke and Han in episode 4.
She really isn’t.
Yes, they definitely get her out of the cell. They certainly give her a ride away from the Death Star, but they wouldn't have been around to give her a ride if Leia hadn’t come up with the plan for getting out.
Two minutes into the 'rescue', when it becomes clear that Luke didn't think any further than getting into the detention block, Leia grabs a gun and creates an exit. Sure they wind up in the garbage. Yes they almost get squashed.
I didn't say it was a good plan.
The point is, she doesn't just stand there and wait to be rescued. She takes an active role in her own security, something the Disney Princesses are pretty much incapable of.
It isn't just in A New Hope either. Return of the Jedi offers an even better example of her ability to get herself out of trouble.
When she's captured by Jabba the Hutt, she waits.
She gets chained to his throne and she waits.
She's made to wear what I have always thought of as 'the space bikini' and a hideous pair of boots** and she waits.
She’s not waiting as part of some greater plan. The greater plan was to sneak Han out at night. It didn’t involve the abootminations and concerns about metal chafing at all. So she waits. When the opportunity presents itself, she makes a weapon out of her chains and saves herself.
One of Walt’s Princesses would have patiently waited for someone to fight their way over to where she was chained up. She would have screamed a little while the fight went on around her, cried the hero’s name out if he was in any danger and basically flailed around like a doily until everyone and everything else around her had been vanquished. Then she’d kiss whoever cut the chains and marry him.
Leia doesn't wait around for the boys to come to her rescue. She enthusiastically takes matters into her own hands. Maybe a little too enthusiastically. Let's face it, she didn't need to kill Jabba. She could have called R2 over, had him slice through the chain and legged it. How is Jabba supposed to stop her? He's a giant slug with arms like a T-Rex. He's not holding her at gun-point and all of his henchmen are too busy watching the drama outside to notice if she gets away.
The Princess Leia solution to captivity is to choke the hell out of the bastard who put you in the ugly shoes yourself and get the hell out before anyone notices. Possibly this isn't the best behaviour for a role model, but it beats passive acceptance of your fate any day of the week.
Know when NOT to fight
Homicidal tendencies aside, Leia is good at getting along with people. Sure she's bossy. She's a Princess, a Senator and the de facto leader of the rebellion. She's ALWAYS giving orders, most of them involving killing large numbers of people or putting her friends and allies in harm's way. That's her job. But she doesn't try to tell the Ewoks what to do or threaten Wicket with a gun when he waves his spear at her, which is probably why she's the only person the Ewoks don't try to cook.
For me though there is one major reason why Leia is the only Princess role model a girl needs:
Choose your own future
The major theme of all of the Disney films is that the Princess needs to get away from her current life, but doesn't have the power to do it on her own. Disney Princesses have no autonomy. Every single one of them is at some point betrothed to or pursued by or under the control of someone else, be it a handsome Prince, a wicked step-mother or a loving, but overbearing father. Even when they fall in love, it's usually based on nothing more than physical appearance: Gaston is so determined to marry Belle (the most beautiful girl in town, and therefore, the best girl in town) that he's willing to lock her father in a mental institution if she says no. Cinderella danced with the Prince ONCE and is perfectly happy to accept a marriage proposal the next day. Snow White was DEAD, but she was such an attractive corpse, the Prince just had to kiss her.***
When we first meet Leia she's on her own ship engaged in a mission to help the Rebellion. A Rebellion she plays an active part in. She attempts to defend her ship and thwarts all attempts to get information from her. She likes her life. A good part of the first film is taken up with Leia getting back to her role within the Rebellion. She's captured not because she's beautiful or because her father has a nice Kingdom the Empire wants to annex without too much effort, but because she's a credible threat. Love has nothing to do with her grand life plans, it's an incidental bonus. It takes three years for Leia to admit that she loves Han and the trilogy doesn't end with the two of them married.
If Star Wars was re-done by Disney, Princess Leia would be held captive on the Death Star not because she is the Rebel Leader and has military value, but because Grand Moff Tarkin wants to marry her. Han and Luke would fight their way through 10,000 storm troopers without injury to themselves. Tarkin and Vader would die quickly and probably off screen. The marriage would still take place, Han being madly in love with the beautiful Princess after only twenty minutes acquaintance. He would then become the Prince of Aldaraan.
Somehow I don't think that film would have quite the same following.
Look, I'm all for realistic expectations and role models. I know that it isn't realistic to model your life on a Princess from a Science Fiction franchise, but it is realistic to look up to women who think for themselves, make their own choices, fight for causes they believe in and who are capable of defending themselves, regardless of where they turn up.
Now, go and rent Star Wars for your daughter and let's see if we can't get a few more of them out in the real world.
+ Please don't email and accuse me of being some kind of misogyny apologist. I'll stand beside anyone fighting for equal rights, fair pay, stronger penalties for domestic abuse, more funding for shelters for women and children and better maternity and nursery benefits for working mothers, but I'm not going to force a two year old to live by the dictates of Germaine Greer and forbid the colour pink from even crossing her retina. On the other hand, I could deny her the option of making a choice now so she gets used to the feeling early on...no? Okay then.
*Note that unlike Leia, I do not have idiot siblings. My sisters are awesome.
** Seriously, let's talk about those boots. This has ALWAYS bothered me (and please feel free to skip what is essentially an endless rant from an admitted nit-picky fashion and costume obsessive) those boots are ugly. U.G.L.Y. They are so far beyond ugly I can't find a word for them. What on earth was Aggie Guerard Rodgers thinking?
It's a desert planet. A desert planet with TWO SUNS. I'm going to guess that the pervading climate is pretty warm. Do you really want to go with boots as your footwear of choice? Really? Not concerned about foot odour at all? Overheating? No?
Okay Aggie, fine. How about this, the rest of the outfit looks delicate and floaty. The abootminations look heavy and 'clompy'. They look like the bootie slippers I had as a child, in fact, since 2003 all I can see when I look at Leia's feet are a pair of Uggs. That's what those boots look like. Ugh. Chalk and cheese go together better than those boots and the space bikini.
Right. I really am ranting now. Will stop.
***And what kind of kiss was it exactly. As far as I remember she was choking on that apple. At least Princess Aurora was 'magically asleep' and there aren't any aspersions of necrophilia on Prince Philip.
