Pretty Pretty Princesses and Mass Murderers

The other day I asked John to record the NBC News at Noon, because they were doing a story on whether or not it is detrimental to children to allow them to dress up as princesses.

I was sort-of surprised they were doing a story on this at all... but perhaps that's a noontime news thing. I don't really know. In any case, it was pretty much a non-story. There were no new studies or perspectives on the matter. It's as if they just threw the debate out there and didn't really come to any definitive conclusions, so I'm going to take the liberty of doing that for them!

I am a full-fledged girly girl. Always have been. While I have no recollection of ever having dressed up as a princess, I adored the slew of Disney incarnations, and I'm sure I had my fair-share of princess-inspired paraphernalia, whether it was dolls dressed as princesses, tutus, tiaras or otherwise.

In any case, it didn't fuck me up. I didn't actually aspire to be a princess at any given point. I didn't have delusions of grandeur, or expect some prince to come and rescue me from who-knows-what, or behave in any way like a princess.

I feel like I've read about and heard about a lot of parents who object to the whole princess thing altogether. Frankly, I don't get it. What's wrong with playing any role, or dressing up as anything? It's play-acting! I mean, don't get me wrong, if we kid - and our child happens to dress up as a princess and then proceeds to behave like one, well, that will not be tolerated. But wearing a tiara? Fine by me.

And to further illustrate my point here - you may all recollect a recent commercial that was universally adored, wherein a young child is dressed up as Darth Vader. Darth Vader... mass murderer and killer of younglings. Yet parents around the world have no objections to their children dressing up as this character. Why? Because he's a great character - he's iconic - and because the children aren't going to grow up to be Darth Vader, unless they've got some seriously deep-seated issues which, costume or not, would've reared their ugly heads regardless.