Being a Princess

Everyone needs a princess dress.

Feminists are picking on Elsa. No, children should not do Hallowe’en as Elsa. In her “moment of self-actualisation”, sniffed Emma Brockes in The Guardian, she busts out of her dowdy village clothes and into … an evening gown, with a slit up the side all the way to her thigh and a bridal-like train dragging behind her. In the New York Times, Annie Pfeifer, who teaches fairy tales in a department of international literary and cultural studies objects to the same moment, a sexy makeover — complete with a slinky ball gown and silver high heels.

Her clothes change in a different way. Before she had a long cloak trailing behind her, now something diaphanous floats. She throws away her thick gauntlet, designed to prevent her from expressing her powers. The thick dress up to the neck had some sort of embroidery on the front, feminine but in keeping with the restrictive style. She fights the tight braids to let her hair down. She is angry and determined, but exultant. The stultifying rules- “Conceal, don’t feel”- that the “perfect girl” had to obey no longer apply.

Annie Pfeifer complains the Grimms rewrote fairy tales to reinforce patriarchy, but as folk tales the stories were told by women, funny and bawdy with a feminist spark. Cinderella won the Prince with her cunning and skill, not her beauty. Gerda rescues her best friend from The Snow Queen, who has frozen her heart. But Frozen has the heart-freezing an accident, by a well-meaning character. The conflict arises from decent people suffering fear and unknowing, not inexplicable wickedness. I find that a wonderful lesson for small people, that good people do bad things because we do not understand, or by accident, and we can work together to be better.

Pfeifer’s ideal fairy tale empowered children to think for themselves and overcome obstacles on their own. Ah. Active characters overcome difficulties to achieve greatness. That lays children open to the disillusionment Larkin wrote of:

the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who’s yellow and keeps the store
Seem far too familiar.

Children are on the treadmill far too young. Léne works with children excluded from school, some as young as seven, for not obeying rules they don’t understand and perhaps can’t obey anyway. If you can’t sit still you should not have to immediately, some way should be found of letting you learn how. Oppositional Defiant Disorder may be a sane reaction to an insane situation. The grown ups are doing bad things because they do not understand, and they fear or resent the child.

So everyone needs a princess dress, boys as well as girls, men as well as women. You are valuable for who you are, not just for what you achieve. You are beautiful. Yes, play actively, and delight in what you, your mind, your body can do, but also take time to delight in your beauty, simply for being human.

Childish entertainments

That perfect child is gone…

I have been reading The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It is a serious novel, which happens to have a child as the main character. It has mystery and threat, the sound of someone crying which can never be admitted, a child crushed and broken by Lovelessness and taken to a place of darkness and reclusive suffering, where good people show her care and attention and her own innate resilience and humanity, warmed into love and creativity, produce something beautiful.

From 1911, I note the way they talk of “blacks”. There is the rich person’s way- they were obsequious and servile…they made salaams and called their masters protectors of the poor and names of that sort- then there is the maid’s way- when you read about them in tracts they are always very religious. You always read as a black’s a man and a brother. It is humane.

In the Guardian, I read Why is Frozen so popular? I have just watched it off BBC1, and am a new fan. Lucinda Everett, a fan who loves it for herself not just her children, mentions hearty praise from critics, academics, parents, and equal rights campaigners but the heart is this: The complex, damaged older sister with icy powers that her abusive parents forced her to conceal, was originally the villain of the piece – blue of skin and spiky of hair. But when married songwriting duo Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez composed Let it Go as an empowering ode to self-acceptance, the film was rewritten and Elsa-mania was born. The sister who turns Anna’s heart to ice is a good person! The attempts to control and hide her gifts and true nature-Be the good girl you always have to be; Conceal, don’t feel– only poison them, hurting her and everyone else; and the way to happiness is accepting and freeing them.

I love it. And there are mean spirited comments. Jeez, the film came out three years ago just Let It Go already. And, The old never bothered me anyway. Those had at least an attempt at wit, a play on words, but then I read, Because some parents are happy to feed their children shit. That is merely vile. Frozen is a complex and subtle work of art. It has humour, it is life-affirming with people coming together, and the opening, the fear-filled attempt to render Elsa safe and under control made me weep at the horror of it. It is funny. The ending is beautiful. Calling it “shit” is the sin against the Holy Spirit.

That mean spirit is everywhere in Guardian comments. The Guardian also spoke up for being Liberal: If liberal means holding true to the values of the Enlightenment, including a belief in facts and evidence and reason, then call me a liberal. And if liberal means cherishing the norms and institutions that protect and sustain democracy, from a free press to an independent judiciary, then call me a liberal. Then the second comment calls for cutting foreign aid, much – or most – of which does not reach or benefit those most in need. I think I hate “EliminatetheNegative” more for pretending to care about effectiveness.

Call me a liberal, too. Love and freedom is in those children’s entertainments, and the meanness of “Suck it up, you lost!” will not overwhelm it. Nigel Farage hates his own voters and party members, mocking them as “low grade people”. (I tried to check the original Telegraph interview for context, but it is behind a pay-wall.) There is something truthful and adult- for all people, for all time- in these children’s entertainments. I will become like a child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Let it go, let it go
And I’ll rise like the break of dawn
Let it go, let it go
That perfect girl is gone
Here I stand
In the light of day
Let the storm rage on
The cold never bothered me anyway!