I like to drive, thank you

Among my many daily e-mail subscriptions is one for Delancey Place, a nifty little item where editor Richard Wade Vague (excellent last name for an editor, heh) e-mails an excerpt from a different book each day. The excerpts skip nimbly across different genres and are usually enough to whet one's appetite for the whole book. Today's excerpt, from Marjorie Williams' The Woman at the Washington Zoo, said of Princess Diana:

"And that is why the manner of her death, even more than her life, has a terrible power for women...We've known for a while that trying to be a princess can stifle you, but it's horrible to think it can kill you...The moral of the story is that whether she's riding in a gilt carriage that bears her to St. Paul's Cathedral for the wedding of the century, or in a black Mercedes that bears her to her death, a passenger--which is the most a princess can hope to be--is never in charge. It's a hard lesson for women to learn, and it's one that men knew all along."

I have wondered if pop culture's seemingly renewed interest in/emphasis on princess-y, feminine roles for women is a last-gasp effort to keep women  in the passenger seats. And I wonder if some people's enthusiastic embrace of the princess perspective is their way to keep from shouldering the wonderful, overwhelming burden of being in charge of your own life.

Comments

[Girl Detective]

There's a great passage in Rebecca Goldstein's first novel, The Mind-Body Problem, in which 2 educated women characters discuss the Cinderella myth. One says the myth about a hard-working gal who succeeds is so deep for her that it goes beyond belief--it's reflex. The other considers all the bad ramifications of the story, then sighs that she agrees. It's a passage that I empathized with, which also frightened me.

I read it several years ago, though, long before the flooding of the market with Disney princess crap. What frightens me now is how I see the girl children of friends wholeheartedly embracing this merchandise. Some recent study showed that girls who identified strongly with princesses as children grow up to be in abusive relationships. I used to hear parents complain about Barney. I don't hear parents complain enough, IMO, about princess stuff. I have a son and another on the way. I'm absurdly relieved that I'm less likely to have to fight the princess battle than if I had a girl.

I agree with Williams's analysis, but I think it's far more common for women to still glorify Princess Diana and conveniently forget about the nasty death part.