On the Subject of Princesses

Sorry to go back into this topic, but I feel this needs to be addressed.

One of the big criticisms of the whole Alicorn Princess Twilight debacle is the notion that Twilight becoming a princess robs her of what makes her a unique character. Up to this point, she's been mostly a socially awkward bookworm, with the former gradually vanishing as she grew closer to her friends and now only showing up when Celestia is involved. After all, princesses are all about having tea parties and sitting in castles looking pretty. What happened to the good old days of there being different ways to be a person? Making her a princess robs her of any character she had!

To which I say, neigh.

A lot of the issues raised can be traced back to the Entertainment Weekly article that announced the finale. Meghan McCarthy proceeded to give some rather poorly-worded arguments about little girls wanting to be a princess and all that, all of which seemingly fly in the face of Faust's feminist beliefs and reasons behind making the show the way it is. She later tweeted that she had meant princesses like Princess Leia, but by then the damage had been done, and fans everywhere were clamoring to the battlements to fight back this ensuing doom. But why this hatred of princesses?

The same reason Celestia isn't a queen: Disney.

If you've been living under a rock, Disney has made several continents worth of cash on its Disney Princess line, targeted at very young girls (actually about a year or two below FiM's age bracket) and revolving around their collection of princesses. And if you have not had the pleasure of being exposed to those wonderful products, please allow me to express my opinion: the entire line is a piece of absolute garbage and should be purged from the planet. Other children-oriented shows and toys bug me, but nothing brings out my sheer hatred like the Disney Princesses can. Every character, regardless of any traits they may have had in their source films, is reduced to the barest of the bare bones. Not only that, but the only female characters they'll acknowledge are princesses, and even if they occasionally pull out someone like Mulan, it will only be to turn her into a princess.

Thanks to Disney's ubiquitous ability to control huge swathes of the world's media, this has seeped into every corner of our society. Princesses have been turned into fairy tale ideals and dreams, something that little girls must always dream about or risk being labeled invalid. Queens are evil monsters, but a princess? She's a symbol of purity, of magic, of dreams coming true. And now we have Twilight Sparkle becoming a princess, thus turning her into the same mass-produced sludge.

There's one teensy-weensy problem with that theory, though, and that's how FiM has handled the idea of a princess.

Celestia, Luna and Cadance are all princesses, true, but the way they are treated differs tremendously from the Disney model. We've seen more than enough evidence that Celestia does, in fact, actually rule her country. She was signing paperwork in "The Crystal Empire," had to cancel a social function for business in "A Bird in the Hoof," and was reading something in "Griffon the Brush-Off" before being buried in scrolls. Cadance veers a bit closer, especially in "A Canterlot Wedding," but during "The Crystal Empire" she not only managed to hold off an all-corrupting Eldritch Abomination for several days (without food or sleep), but even helped Spike save the day. And during the next episode, she's apparently trying to get the Equestrian Games to play in her newfound country, which makes sense as it would provide revenue and fame for the Crystal Empire, as well as reintroduce the long-lost land to the greater world. (Of course, that's probably not what's going to be brought up, but food for thought.)

And then there's Luna. She basically takes everything about the Disney model and smashes it with a sledgehammer. She's dark, moody, frequently angry, and rules over the night. She also enters pony's dreams and gives them comfort. Oh, and did we forget that she was originally a villain?

So let's break it down into brass tacks: Disney princesses are ultimately passive in nature, while in FiM, they are active. And why should we assume that Twilight will be any different?

Why pick on this particular argument? Because of the irony of it all. MLP as a franchise was in the same hole princesses are currently in, and yet this generation has taken great strides to pull it back out. People immediately assume all manner of bizarre things when princesses are brought up, and yet the show has demonstrated a willingness to go in the complete opposite direction with the concept. Furthermore, the same article flat-out said that Twilight's base personality was not going to be changed; she was still going to be obsessed with books and friendship. So why immediately assume that she'll just turn into Pinklestia the minute a pair of wings are attached to her trunk?

And that's my say on this topic. Agree? Disagree? Want to bury me next to an anthill and smear me with honey? Feel free to say so.