Thursday, July 5, 2012

What About The Prince?

I love synchronicity. Here I am, in my corner of the blogosphere thinking about the ways in which Princesses impact my children. Over at The Good Men Project there is a wonderful essay about The Prince and what noxious stereotypes he teaches.

So now I'm thinking about Princes and how to re-frame what we tell our young men about manliness. I don't have any concrete thoughts about this yet (I just read the essay 20 minutes ago), but I wanted to share the link for those who were interested in the Princess post.
The Good Men Project: How To Be A Prince

Interesting sidenote: as I looked around for prince images, I was intrigued by the very small number of single prince images. Almost all of the pictures involve the Princess. He's not really a stand-alone character, apparently. Lot's to think about!

3 comments:

  1. I always thought that most princes were pretty one-dimensional, at least in the classic Disney stories (Cinderella, Snow White, etc) - really, all they do is show up at the end to save the princess. Not that all the princesses were fully developed characters, but the stories really weren't about the prince.

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    1. As I think about this, I am incresingly convinced that the Prince is actually a lot more work to deconstruct and make positive than the Princess. At least the Princeess has some backstory and personality. The Prince is just this...male on a white horse. And what can we really say about that? What does that teach our little boys about the importance of the male side of a relationship?

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    2. Show up and they'll be so grateful they'll marry you?

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