Disney Princesses on Ice - their charm may have melted

So - Mike's new part-time gig has a few perks attached and one was free tickets to Disney Princesses on Ice. You know, the one where all the girls get together and flame each other with IM's and sleep with each other's Princes? No, just joking - I read in the L.A. Times that the evening was supposed to be giving a positive "don't be a mean girl" message but I have to admit, me with my graduate degree in playwriting, didn't quite pick that up. It may have been my dozy insomniac exhaustion or the rapid loss of brain cells of late or perhaps it was over my head? Don't get me wrong - I'd love to get my playwright/mommy claws into one of these shows; I'd have the princesses kick some ass and forget about the prince until they're about 36 and in need of clairol and biological clock servicing.

Luckily (can you hear the sarcasm?) he got three tickets (Julia thought it would be weird to see Princesses on Ice with her dad so my visions of a night alone were dashed) and we got to go to the VIP area, where (mostly) little girls were given a swag bag with a wand and a flashing light-up tiara and a book and got a chance to have their photo taken with Cinderella (boys got swords) and everyone decorated sugar cookies. I was teasing Julia about why she got a swag bag and I didn't and she said "Mommy, you can have my tiara and wand.". I was certain that was an empty promise, considering she was pretty captivated by the show (though she was wondering why Ariel got such a big part compared to our favorite, underdog princess Mulan - the only princess who does anything (no Pocahontas on the Ice) - and there was no Mulan stuff to buy compared to the other princess purchasing possibilities), but the next day she told me again - "You can have my tiara and my wand, Mommy. Really." And I turned to her and said - "You're kind of over the princess thing aren't you?" She agreed. She likes princesses - they just don't have a certain someone's charm anymore. Must be the lack of round glasses and lightening bolt scars.

I guess it's the end of that era. Or beginning to be - it was a weird one to settle in with for me - the even further commercialization of the Disney princesses into a princess clique, the clashing of my fairly feminist values with the cuteness of my kid (who looks like snow white) dressed up like Snow White. I loved Peggy Orenstein's article about her own interior conflict about the princesses her own daughter became obsessed with. But now that I can see the signs of the princess era coming to an end I'm a little sad -- I knew it would end some day, but whoever thought it could come so soon. By the way, the princess wand is still in the wrapper, the tiara sitting in the closet next to the princess dresses that have been unworn since a Gryffindor robe showed up for Halloween...