A little while ago, I was talking to my mom about finding good movies with female lead characters for Princess (when she gets old enough to be interested, that is). We never watch TV and only watch movies once a week (Friday Night Dinner and a Movie) unless we pop in a short Baby Einstein or a few Thomas the Tank Engine episodes once in a while. So it is very important what we let the kids watch because that is all the media they will see. We all enjoy the animated films we have, but as we sifted through them, Lord Herndon and I noticed that none of them have a female main character. There may be a strong female supporting character, but that’s not quite the same. I read this blog post about Pixar specifically and completely agree with it.
On the other hand, we certainly have a princess of our own. She wouldn’t mind a movie with a princess as the star. But our Princess definitely mixes her princess tendencies with all manner of other delicious things. Her tiara will fall off when she skins her knees running at top speed; she will get fingerpaint on her pink dress; she will chip her front teeth chasing Prince in her plastic high-heeled shoes.
Some of our recent photos were of Prince and Princess drawing with sidewalk chalk. What I didn’t tell you was that Princess spent the entire walk home coloring on her white tights with the chalk. Her favorite book right now is Noisy Noisy Princesses. Here are a few of the lines:
Elegant princesses play at the palace… (picture of princesses playing croquet)
…but Princess Penny has amazing adventures! (picture of a princess – wearing a dress – fighting a dragon)
Elegant princesses ride prancing ponies… (you can imagine this picture)
…but Princess Polly pedals! (picture of a princess – in a dress – riding a bicycle downhill)
This is one Princess with skinned knees who would love a strong female character in a movie.
