The dream of being a Princess never dies in our culture. Stories of regal pomp and being swept away by a handsome Prince are still some of the first that today’s young girls encounter. And for adults, Princesscore continues to be a popular aesthetic on TikTok, proving that this dream lasts well into adolescence and beyond. What’s surprising about the enduring popularity of princesshood is that over the past few years, real life Princess fairytales have been exposed in the press as apparently pretty nightmarish realities: full of press intrusion, familial pressure, a lack of agency, gossip, scandal. So why does princesscore persist, for today’s adults and new generations?
Transcript
It’s abundantly clear that being a princess isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. But the dream of being a Princess never dies in our culture. Stories of regal pomp and being swept away by a handsome Prince are still some of the first that today’s young girls encounter. And for adults, Princesscore continues to be a popular aesthetic on TikTok, proving that this dream lasts well into adolescence and beyond.
What’s surprising about the enduring popularity of princesshood is that over the past few years, real life Princess fairy tales have been exposed in the press as apparently pretty nightmarish realities: full of press intrusion, familial pressure, a lack of agency, gossip, scandal. Arguably Meghan Markle’s whole public narrative arc has been of the girl who loved the idea of becoming a princess and then was utterly let down by learning what that truly meant. Whether you interpret what the royals endure as a level of stress that’s offset by a lot of perks, or truly scarring psychological abuse, it’s clear that being a princess is nothing like the fantasies many of us carry from birth onward. So why does princesscore persist, for today’s adults and new generations? Here’s our take on princesscore, and why it seems immune to facts about what it really means to be a princess.
The Princess Dream
When people aspire to the Princess life, what is it they’re actually aspiring to? It’s telling that the Princesscore trend really began to take off online during the pandemic. After the bucolic serenity of cottagecore that exploded in the early stages of lockdown, princesscore was more opulent. As Glamour’s Jenny Singer writes: “We already have a cultural practice of getting dressed up and taking pictures for the internet. Why stop at crop tops and summer dresses?” Also, given the princess aesthetic is such a throwback to childhood, its boom during lockdown was a kind of regression. As psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb writes: “Whenever we’re in a stressful situation, we tend to regress. Going back to a time in our lives when we felt safe and we felt protected is a natural instinct during these times.”
The other huge influence here was Bridgerton, which first dropped on Netflix over Christmas 2020 and ushered in the period drama as up-front fantasy. The color blind casting and chamber music orchestrations of contemporary pop songs created an aesthetic that had one foot in the past, and one firmly in the modern era of social media.
The Princess phase is one that seemingly every young girl goes through. And you can see why. Fairy Tales and Disney films are some of the first cultural products we’re introduced to growing up, and the roles women play in these stories are, for the most part, Princesses. They get the big castle, the flowing dresses, the happily ever after. But as adults, we have to wonder what, truly, kids are learning it is to be a princess – does it mean to live a life without hard work and be waited on by a full staff of servants; to live a life of over-the-top opulence; to be at the center of a story where an entire kingdom finds your life choices significant; to experience life-changing romance? Adults, meanwhile, have the benefit of hindsight and facts about what actual princesses have had to endure, as we’re more aware than ever of what goes on behind the palace gates. So, why do kids and adults still aspire to something that’s such a questionable fantasy to begin with, and (it’s clearer than ever) is nothing like that dream in reality?
The Princess Reality
Over the past few years, the grim reality of what being a princess is really like has been made clear. In the case of Meghan Markle, her story felt like a real life Cinderella tale — this ordinary girl falling in love with a prince (okay, she was a semi-famous actress, but still a naive-feeling woman from across the Pond who was relatively unknown on the global stage). And she got a fairytale royal wedding that added inclusive and modern touches while still channeling the classic romance of royal glamor. But this introduction made the fall from grace all the more dramatic. At first it was just the reality of the press intrusion, and how hard Meghan found it to be in such an (often harsh) spotlight. But things steadily got worse.
There were the constant comparisons to Kate, and the rumored feud between them. The couple’s secession from the Monarchy altogether, and how that precipitated a wave of revelations about Meghan’s treatment — the fears around what skin color her baby might have, the extent of her depression, and the lack of support she received. And after all these revelations, the tabloid press attacked her even more, the British public increasingly turned on her, and she’s found herself taking harsh criticisms from both conservatives who made her a culture war figure and the more mainstream public that accuses her of excessively playing the victim. Perhaps what was most shocking and uncomfortable about Meghan’s trajectory, though, was that it wasn’t truly new or even (if you look at history) that surprising.
The pattern closely mirrored the treatment received by Princess Diana over two decades prior. She too began as a royal starlet, embodying everything about the Princess dream, before she was ground down by the tabloids and the pressures placed upon her by the firm. Diana long preceded Meghan in being open about her mental health struggles and how difficult the reality of being a Princess actually was, in an era where speaking out was even harder. And Diana didn’t have a devoted partner who was willing to put her health and safety first: Diana’s death was a direct result of this treatment she got from the tabloids. So Harry’s and Meghan’s extrication from Royal Life was directly linked to the fear that becoming a princess can literally cost your life.
Also, aside from safety concerns, across history we can see how being a Princess is actually quite a lot of work, and comes with more restrictions that it does freedoms. Princess Margaret was famously barred from marrying her first love, Captain Peter Townsend, because he was a divorcee. Zara Phillips, daughter of Princess Anne, said she was “lucky” not to grow up with a royal title, because of the life she was afforded in comparison to her cousins William and Harry. Even Kate Middleton, who is a much beloved Princess and very likely to be the future Queen, is increasingly dealing with a lot of unpleasantness as the price of that, like hypercritical articles and a forensic analysis of every tiny detail of her life that’s caught on camera.
The popular idea of fairytale romance and glamor can’t last long at all under this kind of scrutiny under a microscopic lens. Instead, the reality is claustrophobic, akin to living in a glass cage.
On film, we typically still get the more idealized image of being a Princess, especially in the entire Hallmark Christmas movie genre, but with some examples like Corsage and Grace of Monaco we are starting to see the more difficult side reflected – where one’s agency is sublimated because of the weight of their royal responsibility. So if the Princess dream is persisting despite us knowing how hard this life actually is, maybe the Princess dream isn’t even about royalty anymore. Maybe the aesthetic is a vehicle for something else.
What the Princess is Actually About
We may be tempted to write off girls embracing princess culture as just proof that they’re being manipulated by consumerism, but for psychologist Dr. Susan Scheftel, it’s more developmental, saying: “In clinging to pink and princess culture, perhaps a girl is celebrating and acknowledging a variety of things: her gendered body, her generative capacities, her ability to captivate and mesmerize (as all children can) as well as her place in the surrounding culture.” There’s also been a steady unpicking of people’s assumptions about the lessons Princess culture teaches young girls. Researcher Sarah Coyne interviewed over 100 ten and eleven-year-olds and found that “girls who were obsessed with princess culture at 5 were actually more likely to hold progressive views about gender roles—to advocate for both female empowerment and for men to express their emotions—at age 10,” and also that princess culture had a positive effect on body image.
In that sense, princesscore isn’t really about royalty as much as it’s about femininity. In style and cosplay videos the aesthetic works as a way to reclaim elements of femininity that women have been made to feel bad about, or that previously had more uncomfortable associations with old fashioned, archaic notions of what a woman could be. We see princesscore baking videos, a celebration of corsets as a fashion item, and a proud embrace of the color pink.
Princesscore is also changing. Instead of still being just about white, Eurocentric beauty standards, now the royal aesthetic is being opened up to a wider array of people. Not just through examples like Meghan Markle, but also through films like The Princess and the Frog, and Disney casting Halle Bailey as Ariel in their upcoming live action Little Mermaid. And princesscore is open to all who embrace femininity, with expressions like gay princesscore and trans princesscore.So thinking about what it really means to be a princess and embrace this aesthetic, maybe the reason it’s endured for so long is because of feeling seen.
Conclusion
Princesses, princes, kings and queens — these roles, on the one hand, exemplify the kind of social and financial inequality that so many people are turning against. They’re about select elites ruling over the masses for no good reason except the happenstance of birth (or marriage). But the princess fantasy almost feels completely separate from this — a conscious choice to preserve emblems of classic femininity while opening them up to wider groups.
So, maybe we’ve got this backwards. Instead of thinking about how the reality of being a princess should have killed the princess fantasy, maybe it’s exactly the endurance of the princess fantasy that has made people more intentional, and more critical, of what being a princess actually is. Leaning into princesscore has made people, especially young girls, feel powerful, feel special, feel seen, and feel themselves.
SOURCES
Singer, Jenny. “Princesscore Is Cottagecore With More Tiaras.” Glamour, 6 Jul. 2021 https://www.glamour.com/story/princesscore-is-cottagecore-but-with-more-tiaras
Ducharme, Jamie. “Why You’re Regressing to Your Teenage Self During the COVID-19 Outbreak.” Time, 15 Apr. 2020 https://time.com/5819224/covid-19-act-like-teeangers
Bridger-Linning, Stephanie. “Princess Margaret’s 3 great loves, as she and Peter Townsend reunite in The Crown.” Tatler, 14 Nov. 2022 https://www.tatler.com/article/princess-margaret-love-life-every-relationship-peter-townsend-the-crown
Hill, Erin. “Zara Tindall Says She’s ‘Lucky’ Her Parents Chose Not to Give Her a Royal Title.” People, 4 Jun. 2018 https://people.com/royals/zara-tindall-says-she-s-lucky-she-wasnt-given-a-royal-title/
Scheftel, Susan. “Princess Culture: What Is It All About?” Psychology Today, 24 Aug. 2015 https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/evolving-minds/201508/princess-culture-what-is-it-all-about
Dockterman, Eliana. “A Researcher Thought Disney Princesses Had a Negative Impact on Young Girls. The Results of Her New Study Surprised Her.” Time, 3 Aug. 2021 https://time.com/6086875/disney-princess-culture-study/