Princess charming
: I want to see the Princess Diaries yesterday because, hey, there was a hurricane coming and I have kids.
It hasn’t been the male-est of weeks for me: I attended bridal meetings, read Women’s Wear Daily, went to the American Girl store to get a doll for my daughter, wrote extensively about the gayGuv, and went to see the Princess Diaries. But, hey, I’m man enough to take it. I make my own Viagra.
Anyway, two reasons to mention this: The first is that Nora Jones (OK, add that to my litany if sissiness) sings Love Me Tender and it’s great. This is the benefit of the new age of the single: I went to iTunes and bought it for 99 cents.
Second reason to mention this is that it was fascinating to see how Disney got around the princess/feminist problem. The plot: The princess has to be married to take the throne in her charming (and inexplicably ethnically mixed) European principality. She is about to marry a nice but dull Brit (aren’t they all?) to fulfill the obligation but ends up falling for the nephew of the dastardly John Rhys-Davis, who wants the nephew to steal the crown. More than you want to know already, I know. And if you plan to go to the flick, you sissy, you, then stop reading because there’s a spoiler: In the end, she lets the Brit off the hook to his great relief (he did seem rather McGreeveyesque) but did not marry the nephew — which would have been the solution in the old days of princess movies; instead, she gets the parliament to repeal the requirement that queens have a man. Zap: The feminist princess movie.
