Jerramy Fine - In Defense of the Princess: How Plastic Tiaras and Fairytale Dreams Can Inspire Smart, Strong Women

PRAISE FOR SOMEDAY MY PRINCE WILL COME

Jeremy Fine doesnt need a prince to corner the market on charming. JEN LANCASTER, AUTHOR OF BITTER IS THE NEW BLACK

Fines writing is pithy and funny... a fresh twist on the tired tales of offbeat girls in search of their dream.USA TODAY

Fines is a charming and humorous story... showing that the strength of ones conviction can be the strongest predictor of ones fate. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Inspires readers to believe and go after the impossible, while still trusting in happily ever after. HAMPTONS SOCIAL LIFE

ALSO BY JERRAMY FINE

Someday My Prince Will Come

The Regal Rules for Girls

Bright Young Royals

2016 by Jerramy Fine

Published by Running Press,

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For Cecily Guinevere

The eternal feminine draws us upward.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

But I think she might be a real princess!

Morgan, honey, just because she has a funny dress on doesnt mean shes a princess. Shes a seriously confused woman whos fallen into our laps.

ENCHANTED (2007)

M Y MOTHER IS A die-hard feminist. To this very day, she refuses to wear a bra. She sees this as some sort of revolutionary act, insisting that being comfortable is more important than meeting societys expectations about women. Televised beauty pageants were banned in my household because they were seen as glaringly degrading. On the rare occasions when I was allowed to watch something on TV (that wasnt on PBS), I had to mute the commercials so I wouldnt be exposed to all that evil, corporate brainwashing. Anything vaguely capitalistic was the devil; everything that was natural and handmade was revered.

My parents hoped than one day Id join the Peace Corps, become a human rights lawyer, or develop an organic garden in my local community. But, despite all this hippie parenting, all my mothers staunch feminist views, and all the years of constant encouragement to become a strong, independent woman who would be admired above all for my brainas a daughter I must have been a terrible disappointment. Because I wanted to be one thing and one thing only: a princess.

Im not sure when it started. Im tempted to say that my longing to be a princess began at birth. Is that crazy? All I know is that this noble yearning was so strong there were times in my childhood when I could actually feel it, physically, in my heart.

I may have been only two years old, but I knew that I wanted to live in a castlenot a farmhouse decorated with Guatemalan cushions, modern art sculptures, and all kinds of weird antiques. I knew that I belonged in a place with marble floors, sweepings staircases, and four-poster canopy beds, not a home with art deco carpeting that my parents found abandoned in an alleyway. I knew I should have been wearing massive crinoline skirts with layers upon layers of petticoatsnot homemade outfits of tie-dyed hemp fiber. My backyard may have been filled with tepees and Tibetan prayer flags, but I would close my eyes and imagine vast croquet lawns edged with elegant topiaries and splashing fountains.

You get the picture. But I adamantly believe that my princess cravings were more than a severe case of reverse rebellion. They seemed to stem from something much, much deeperfrom a sacred window in my heart that even as a babe in arms I was desperate to open. I felt certain that if only I could fully access that part of me, finally everything would make sense.

When I was five years old, my family moved to a rural farm town in the Rocky Mountains so my parents could get even closer to nature. (Apparently you can never be close enough.) But up until then we lived in Denvera city filled with a pretty bland collection of architecture. The one exception was the state capitol building, which, compared to the dull structures surrounding it, seemed positively majestic with its polished steps, huge Roman columns, and towering golden dome. The first time I ever saw its stately splendor, I was a toddler strapped into the backseat of the family station wagon. As we drove closer to it and eventually past it, my mom says I had burst into tears. When she asked me what was the matter, I had whimpered simply, I... I... didnt see the Queen.

Evidently, I was so upset, she didnt have the heart to tell me that the building wasnt a palace and that the Queen didnt live there, or more importantly, that Colorado had no reigning monarchy. I was left to discover these devastating facts on my own, and, for the next few months, every time we drove past the capitol, I would continue to scan the windows anxiously looking for members of the royal family. I harbored a sincere hope that they would recognize me as one of their own, welcome me into the confines of the palace, and rescue me once and for all from my dreadful hippie existence.

But where did it come from? people ask meas if wanting to be a princess was some sort of mysterious insect bite.

Its a very good question because I certainly wasnt raised to be a girl who defined myself by whether or not I had a tiara on my head.

You must have watched lots of Disney movies as a child, they insist, or read lots of fairy tales?

Fairy tales? I wish. Since TV wasnt an option, I learned to read before kindergarten and became voracious in my consumption of library books. I loved Nancy Drew and The Baby-Sitters Club, but around third grade, when I started to read the entire Sweet Valley High series, my mother put her foot down and made me read classics like