The Princess Diaries princess, Mia Thermopolis, is a self-described “freak” and
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“Princess as Freak?: Reading The Princess Diaries” Brenda Bethman University of Missouri-Kansas City The Princess Panel Girls’ Studies/Girls’ Culture Subtheme Midwest Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association Kansas City, MO, October 12-14 Since 2001, when Disney repackaged nine female characters into the Disney Princess line, little American girls have been obsessed with princesses. But princesses are not just for little girls, as is evidenced by the success of Meg Cabot’s teen chick lit series, The Princess Diaries (not to mention the Disney Princess bridal gown line, introduced in 2007). First published in 2000, the series has just published its eighth novel and is wildly popular (the series spent thirty-eight weeks on the New York Times children’s series bestseller list); two films based on the series, starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews, were produced in 2001 and 2004 (by Disney). The Princess Diaries princess, Mia Thermopolis, is a self-described “freak” and views her newfound identity as the sole heir to the throne of Genovia as adding to her freakishness. At first glance, Mia’s dogged determination to keep her combat boots and use her throne as a means to do good seem to make her a different kind of princess. Like a Disney princess, however, Mia also undergoes a makeover and has her “one true love.” In this paper, I will discuss the ways in which Mia does and does not conform to the dominant stereotype of the Disney princess, focusing in particular on how the films and novels differ in their depictions of Mia’s princesshood. I will first give an overview of Disney Princesses, focusing in particular on the ways in which “Walt’s princesses” differ from those of “Team Disney” (see Do Rozario), and will then
2 turn to an analysis of the Princess Diaries (both the books and films). I will conclude with a discussion of Cabot’s texts as teen chick lit. While stories of princesses have a long history, the Walt Disney is, of course, one of the main "princess film" factories in the U.S. Ever since the studio's first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Disney has been retelling classic fairytales, always adding its own focus or spin. Princess stories made while Walt was alive strictly adhere to the passiveprincess role. Snow White, Cinderella (1950) and Sleeping Beauty (1959) are all tales in which the title characters don’t, in Peggy Orenstein words, “do” anything other than be pretty and wait for their prince to rescue them. Disney didn't revisit the princess story again until 1989 (approximately two decades after Walt’s death) with The Little Mermaid and then Beauty and the Beast in 1991. While the studio once again chose “classic” princess fairytales for adaptation, the “Team Disney” princesses were “less prim, more democratic” (Do Rozario, 45), even somewhat “feminist.” Thus both Ariel and Belle are more active in determining their fates than were Aurora, Snow White, and Cinderella (note, however, that their activity is ultimately in the service of reaching the typical princess fate of happily ever after with their true love). Two other major differences between Walt’s and the Team Disney princesses are the role of the femme fatale and the princess’ relationship with her father. As Rebecca Anne Do Rozario points out, the early Disney princesses always had a femme fatale counterpart (Snow White’s and Cinderella’s stepmothers; Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty), who wants to usurp the princess’s power and rule the kingdom herself. These femme fatales were always more interesting than the passive princess and were drawn with what Marina Warner terms “exuberant glee” (think about it—who do you remember more, Aurora or Maleficent?). This was, of course, in the heyday of
3 the Hollywood femme fatale (Crawford, Davis, West). Team Disney’s films, however, were made in a different era, one in which the “princess herself absorbed some of the exuberance of the femme fatale” (Do Rozario, 44), allowing the new Team Disney princesses to demonstrate some independence and sexuality that was formerly assigned to the femme fatale. Looking at the father’s role, we see that while the earlier Disney princesses tended to be fatherless, the later princesses do have fathers, with whom they have close relationships. While the dramatic tension in Walt’s films revolved around female conflict (the attempt by the femme fatale to usurp the princess’s power), the dramatic tension of the Team Disney princess films centers on the daughter’s “rebellion” against her father, often portrayed as romantic rebellion (Ariel’s falling in love with a human, Jasmine’s rejection of the suitors the Sultan suggests, etc.). This rebellion represents “signs of strain in the relationship between father and daughter. She wants change, he wants stability [. . .] The father/princess relationship serves as the parallel to the government, where father represents traditional, somewhat autocratic, law and order, and the princess’s function is to represent autonomy and openness” (Do Rozario, 53). The princess’s conflict with her father plays itself out in romantic terms through her search for an “equal match between hero and princess” (Do Rozario, 55), a match that “refutes the tradition in which the princess acquiesces to an unequal union in order to ensure political or familial peace” (Do Rozario, 55). We can see, then, that the Team Disney princesses differ significantly from their earlier sisters, reflecting the changes in women’s roles between the early and late twentieth century. It is in this context that I now turn to the Princess Diaries. I would like to first give a brief overview of the book series and will then discuss Mia as Disney Princess, including a comparative analysis of the books and films. The book series is
4 written by Meg Cabot, an author known for writing adult and teen chick lit. First published in 2000, Cabot has to date published currently eight volumes in the series, along with three novellas, and three “how-to” books (Princess Lessons, Perfect Princess, and Holiday Princess; ). Volumes nine and ten are scheduled to be published in 2008 and 2009; volume ten will be the last book in the series according to Cabot (for a full list, see http://www.megcabot.com/princessdiaries/about.php). While the series has been criticized for too many pop culture references (something Cabot pokes fun at by giving Mia an English teacher who makes the same criticisms about Mia’s writing), it has spent time on the New York Times’ bestsellers’ list and has won several awards, including the American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults Award, the American Library Association Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers Award, the New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age Award, and the International Reading Association/Children's Book Council Young Adults' Choice Award (for a full list of awards, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Diaries). The main character (and diary-writer) of the Princess Diaries is Mia Thermopolis, aka Her Royal Highness, Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo, Crown Princess of Genovia. When the series begins, Mia is a fourteen-year-old freshman at the private Albert Einstein High School in New York City, where she lives with her mother and cat in a Greenwich Village loft. Before discovering she is a princess, Mia is a typical teenager who worries about not fitting in due to her “freakishness,” as she puts it: “I’m practically the biggest freak in the entire school. I mean, let’s face it: I’m five foot nine, flat-chested, and a freshman. How much more of a freak could I be?” (Cabot, The Princess Diaries, 1). Contributing to her sense of freakishness is her mother’s upcoming date with her algebra teacher. Worse than that for Mia, however, is the news her father gives her that he is Prince of Genovia and unable to have any more children, thus
5 making Mia the heir to the throne and Princess of Genovia. Mia’s immediate response to the news that she is a princess focuses on her looks: This is how NOT a princess I am. I am so NOT a princess that when my dad started telling me that I was one I totally started crying. I could see my reflection in this big gold mirror across the room, and my face had gotten all splotchy, like it does in PE whenever we play dodge ball and I get hit. I looked at my face in that big mirror and I was like, This is the face of a princess? You should see what I look like. You never saw anyone who looked LESS like a princess than I do (Cabot, The Princess Diaries, 44-45). From this moment on, Mia struggles to accept her role as a princess and to reconcile it with her identity as a feminist and environmentalist and her adolescent desire for “self-actualization.” Cabot clearly knows her Disney princesses and describes the pressure Mia feels to live up to princess stereotypes while maintaining her sense of self. In terms of Mia’s relationship to Disney princesses, this tension can be seen most clearly through a comparison of the books and films. I would argue that Cabot’s Mia closely resembles the Team Disney princesses in most ways except for looks. Like the Team Disney princesses, Mia also has a closer relationship with her father and they experience conflict in regard to how to rule Genovia. Where Cabot’s Mia most resembles Ariel, Belle, et al, however, is her relationship with Michael. Like the Team Disney princesses, Mia also rejects more “suitable” mates and insists upon continuing her relationship with “that boy” as her grandmother refers to Michael. Both Mia’s grandmother and father do not see Michael as worthy of her princess status, which eventually causes their breakup as Michael insists in volume eight on moving to Japan for a year so he can help build a robotic arm that will perform heart surgery without opening the chest; he hopes that this will show the world that he is worthy of being with a princess as his achievement will make him
6 equal to her birth. Mia’s resemblance to a Team Disney princess is highlighted by Cabot in this volume when her friend J.P. takes Mia to see her favorite musical, Beauty and the Beast, to cheer her up after Michael leaves. The novel ends without resolving the breakup of Mia and Michael. While Cabot’s Mia may be more of a “Team Disney” princess, there is one way in which she resembles neither type of the Disney princess and that is in regard to her looks. Both types of Disney princesses are conventionally beautiful, with large breasts, small waists, and flowing hair. Mia, however, does not resemble a traditional princess, even after her makeover with Paolo, who makes her look, in Mia’s words, like “Vicky, the captain’s daughter in [. . .] The Love Boat” (Cabot, The Princess Diaries, 129). In volume eight, Mia gets a new haircut that makes her look even less like a princess (and more like Demi Moore in G.I. Jane, according to her mother), a fact her grandmother acknowledges by asking Mia how she intends to keep her tiara on when there’s nothing for the combs to dig into (Cabot, Princess on the Brink, 33). Turning now to the films, we see that the filmic Mia bears little resemblance to either Cabot’s Mia or a Team Disney princess. Rather, I would argue that Mia, as played by Anne Hathaway, harkens back to Walt’s princesses, both in appearance and behavior. A comparison of the makeover scene in the first film to the novel demonstrates the differences. In the novel, the makeover is described after the fact by Mia and rather matter-of-factly, with Mia’s chief complaint being about the lack of control she felt during the makeover. She explains her lack of resistance by stating that “It’s sort of hard when all these beautiful, fashionable people are telling you how good you’d look in this, and how much that would bring out your cheekbones, to remember you’re a feminist and an environmentalist” (Cabot, The Princess Diaries, 128). In contrast, the film never allows Mia to comment on what she thinks about the process (although it is hinted that she’s happy with it, if a bit embarrassed when going to school the first time). And
7 the Mia who emerges from the film makeover is one who is “ironed flat of anything unique, processed into a human Barbie doll. Her after appearance includes the mandatory smooth, straight mane, arched brows, and full make-up” (Ford & Mitchell, 26). While Cabot’s Mia struggles with her new post-makeover self, the filmic Mia is presented as something for girls to aspire to. In terms of appearance, this Mia definitely resembles Walt’s princesses over the more sexually-knowing Team Disney princesses. The films also kill off Mia’s father, thus further reducing her claim to be an Ariel or a Belle, and making her a Cinderella instead. And finally, in The Princesses Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, Mia has broken up with Michael and the film ends with a romance between Mia and Lord Nicholas Devereaux, a suitably royal beau for a princess in the tradition of Walt. There are many other differences between the films and novels, but time prevents me from discussing them fully today (just as it prevents me from more fully fleshing out the ways in which both Mias do and do not resemble Disney princesses). I would like to conclude by positing a possible reason for these differences. The major reason for these differences, I think, is the generic difference. Cabot’s texts fall into the genre of teen chick lit (or chick lit jr.), a genre that, ideally (and like its adult counterpart), hopes the teen reader achieve self-awareness through its presentation of the “imperfect” teenager. As Joanna Webb Johnson notes, “Mia from the Princess series [is] far from prom queen perfect and offer[s] a more hopeful and affirming image of the typical teenage. [Teen chick lit books] acknowledge a world that cannot be controlled but can be negotiated. Not only is perfection frowned on in these books, it comes across as unnatural, uninteresting, and, what is more important, not fun” (149). In contrast, the first Princess Diaries film is what Elizabeth Ford and Deborah Mitchell term a “makeover movie.” As such, it focuses almost exclusively on Mia’s appearance and creates an aspirational character.
8 Rather than creating a character whose princesshood is part of an adolescent struggle with which girls can identify, Garry Marshall gives young girls just another “pretty woman” to whom they can feel inferior and want to look like. In that regard, the film Mia is much more of a Disney princess than Cabot’s character. Works Cited Cabot, Meg. The Princess Diaries. New York, NY: Harper Trophy, 2000. Cabot, Meg. Princess on the Brink. vol. 8 of The Princess Diaries. New York, NY: Harper Trophy, 2007. Do Rozario, Rebecca-Anne C. “The Princess and the Magic Kingdom: Beyond Nostalgia, the Function of the Disney Princess.” Women’s Studies in Communication 27.1 (Spring 2004): 34-59. Ford, Elizabeth A., and Deborah C. Mitchell. The Makeover in Movies: Before and After in Hollywood Films, 1941-2002. Jefferson, NC; London: McFarland & Co., 2004. Hunter, Tim. “The Princess Syndrome.” The Age August 21, 2004, n.p. Available online: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/20/1092972730414.html Johnson, Joanna Webb. “Chick Lit Jr: More Than Glitz and Glamour for Teens and Tweens.” Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction. ed. Suzanne Ferris and Mallory Young. New York; London: Routledge, 2006, 141-58. Thomas, Susan Gregory. Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds. Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
