Princess Cultures: Mediating Girls’ Imaginations and Identities (Mediated Youth)

Princesses today are significant figures in girls’ culture in the United States and around the world. Although the reign of girls’ princess culture has generated intense debate, this anthology is the first to bring together international and interdisciplinary perspectives on the multitude of princess cultures, continuously redrawn and recast by grownups and girls from the Ancien Régime to the New Millennium. Essays critically examine the gendered, racialized, classed, and ethnic meanings of royal figures and fairytale and pop culture princesses inscribed in folk tales, movies, cartoons, video games, dolls, and imitated in play and performance. Focusing on the representation and reception of the princess, this collection sheds new light on the position of princess cultures mediating the lives, imaginations, and identities of girls from toddlers to teenagers – and beyond. Cover 1 Table of Contents 7 Acknowledgements 9 Introduction (Miriam Forman-Brunell and Rebecca Hains) 13 Part I: Princess Cultures and Children’s Cultures 25 Chapter One: The Princess and the Teen Witch: Fantasies of the Essential Self (Ilana Nash) 27 Chapter Two: Applying for the Position of Princess: Race, Labor, and the Privileging of Whiteness in the Disney Princess Line (Megan Condis) 49 Chapter Three: Ghetto Princes, Pretty Boys, and Handsome Slackers: Masculinity, Race and the Disney Princes (Guillermo Avila-Saavedra) 69 Chapter Four: Rescue the Princess: The Videogame Princess as Prize, Parody, and Protagonist (Sara M. Grimes) 89 Chapter Five: Playing to Belong: Princesses and Peer Cultures in Preschool (Karen WohLwend) 113 Part II: Princess Cultures Beyond Western Cultures 137 Chapter Six: Mono- or Multi-Culturalism: Girls around the World Interpret Non-Western Disney Princesses (Diana Natasia and Charu Uppal) 139 Chapter Seven: Princess Culture in Qatar: Exploring Princess Media Narratives in the Lives of Arab Female Youth (Kirsten Pike) 163 Part III: Princess and Performance Cultures 185 Chapter Eight: Blue Bloods, Movie Queens, and Jane Does: Or How Princess Culture, American Film, and Girl Fandom Came Together in the 1910s (Diana Anselmo-Sequeira) 187 Chapter Nine: JAPpy: Portraits of Canadian Girls Mediating the Jewish American Princess and Identity (Rebecca Starkman) 215 Chapter Ten: If I Were a Belle: Performers’ Negotiations of Feminism, Gender, and Race in Princess Culture1 (Rebecca C. Hains) 233 Part IV: The Royal Cultures and Imagined Princess Cultures 257 Chapter Eleven: Princess Sissi of Austria: Image, Reality, and Transformation (Phyllis S. Zrzavy and Helfried C. Zrzavy) 259 Chapter Twelve: Dedicated to Princesses: The Marriage Market and the Royal Revelations of Ancien Régime Fairy Tales (Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario) 279 Contributors 299 Index 303 Princesses today are significant figures in girls' culture in the United States and around the world. Although the reign of girls' princess culture has generated intense debate, this anthology is the first to bring together international and interdisciplinary perspectives on the multitude of princess cultures, continuously redrawn and recast by grownups and girls from the Ancien Régime to the New Millennium. Essays critically examine the gendered, racialized, classed, and ethnic meanings of royal figures and fairytale and pop culture princesses inscribed in folk tales, movies, cartoons, video games, dolls, and imitated in play and performance. Focusing on the representation and reception of the princess, this collection sheds new light on the position of princess cultures mediating the lives, imaginations, and identities of girls from toddlers to teenagers -- and beyond.--Provided by publisher