Why I Love the Princesses (and fairy tales in general)

In today's society, we focus a lot on doing instead of being. We must do something great, earn something great, having something great to show off, to be great. Our doing should be a reflection of our being but our doing should not be the measure of our being. I find this especially true in the world of women since the feminist movement.

The princess fairy tales (and most of those commonly referred to as "Disney Princesses") are given a lot of flack for portraying women who only sit around and wait for true love to rescue her from whatever peril she is in. She does not do anything (other than fulfill stuffy old values of cooking, cleaning, marriage, and the like, if that). But what I propose is that the princesses show us the value of being over doing, show us that to amounting to something great is attainable because we are all born great because we are. I propose that the princesses teach us values that make us better, stronger, more feminine women who are then able to engage the world and because our personhood is great, we can then do great things.

This is why I (have come to) love the princesses. I don't have to do anything spectacular and I don't have to look all over the place for my spectacular thing to do to make me great, I already am great and therefore can do great things, even small things in a great way (like Uncle Ben [Spiderman, in case you didn't know] says, "With great power comes great responsibility"). We must do great things precisely because we are great.

Herein lies the problem, though: how do we measure this greatness? What scale is there to tell me if I am doing great things? What is great to a person in desperate need will not be the same as to a person with plenty. Then do everything with all of your heart, all of yourself; do everything in love. That is the true measure of greatness--how much you open your heart to those around you and simply love.

My new project

Joy Anderson, a friend of mine and my household sister, studied at Franciscan University of Steubenville with me and was also a Theology and Catechetics/Youth Ministry major wrote a "Princessology" as her senior thesis (please check out her blog).This Princessology has been on my heart and mind for a long time and last year I had her e-mail me what she had (I was a youth minister at the time and thought that perhaps I would be able to implement something for my girls based on it...that didn't happen). About 6 weeks ago I began teaching Religion at a Catholic high school and a few weeks in some girls approached me about started a girls lunch group where we could be women and learn about being women of God together. At the time I had to turn them down as I was overloaded as it was and had no idea what to prepare for them (not to mention planning my wedding...). I was going through some papers several weeks later and found the Princessology and read through it again. It was a Divine incident. I had the perfect material for a girls' lunch group!

The problem. The Princessology currently only covered three princesses. Joy designed the Princessology around Disney princesses because the are the most universally recognized and their stories are well-known, but she only had time to analyze three of them: Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Belle (Beauty and the Beast), and Ariel (The Little Mermaid). We all know that there are many more Disney princesses! Snow White and Cinderella to name two! Not to mention the "unconventional" princesses like Nala (The Lion King) and exemplary Disney heroines like Wendy (Peter Pan) and Alice (Alice in Wonderland) and several lesser known Disney princesses such as Eilonwy (The Black Cauldron). I knew what I must do. I must put all of my talents (and majors--Theology, Catechetics/Youth Ministry, English Writing) together and expand the Princessology.

This is my project--expand the Princessology in quantity of both princesses and content. I currently have a list of 25 princesses (including Thumbelina and Anastasia--non-Disney princesses) that I am researching and analyzing seeing if they fit as individuals into the Princessology. Also, in Joy's tradition, I am attaching Marian virtues to each princesses and other virtues as they fit. What I will also be doing creating is a "test" to find out which princess you are--containing elements of both your personality as compared to a princess's and also a spiritual dimension to see where or how you wish to grow in the Lord.

This could potentially be a great break-through for women's ministry. I guess we'll see how it goes with the girls' lunch club! I will keep you all updated with the Princessology progress and will share parts of it on here from time to time as well.