The Princess Complex
My epiphany was about my complex, contradictory and down-right dangerous understanding of men. And inherent within this, my overly romanticised idolisation of Prince Charming.
It’s no news to those close to me that for some time now I’ve been struggling with what pop culture likes to refer to as, ‘The Princess Complex.’ It’s a wrestle I’ve been rolling in for a while, but I feel like I’ve finally surfaced from the struggle as the winner.
I want to pin my realisation down in words. Written words, unlike fleeting emotions or habitual mindsets, seem concrete. I feel a sense of safety in things when they are written. Now that I feel like I’ve somewhat got a hold on the complex relationship I have with men, or rather just the idea of men, I want to imprison it into words so that it can be at my mercy, and not I at it.
I've never liked the idea of The Princess Complex. The Princess Complex states that fairy tales and Disney classics condition women to hinge their value, worth and safety on the love and approval of their Prince Charming. It teaches young girls to think that they need a man to be saved, to be adored and to be loved. Negative rhetoric about The Princess Complex made me squeamish and I often objected to it with emotional intensity. It feels uncomfortable for someone to take something I have hinged my happiness on for so long and spin it as a negative. I remember my best friend once said that this response in us, this irrational objection is usually how we know we are being confronted with the truth. That if it wasn’t true, it wouldn’t bother me so much. He was right. The truth does hurt.
I do have a Princess Complex, or rather I have had. A doozy of one at that. I have defended my Princess Complex for a long time. In a way, how I have protected it, is almost metaphorically linked to the princess narrative itself. I guarded my internal princess and her ideals in her tower, much like the fairy-tale ‘dragons keep’. Yet, I've realised that in defending my inner princess from external threats, I have perpetuated her helplessness and oppression. I wasn’t protecting her from the oppressor, I was the oppressor. So much of the world’s misogyny is perpetuated by women who shackle themselves. I rage against my own ideals these days as much as anyone else’s.
When I think back to how I found myself trapped in this complex and even worse, perpetuating it to the harm of my own Prince Charming, I start to see how the misconception fell into place.
The Birth of the Misconception
As I found my way in the world, I had a deep longing for love. Intimate, complex, contradictory love. Don’t we all? I fell asleep every night dreaming about it. I gazed at the stars fantasising about it. I daydreamed about it whenever I had the chance. I still do. It has and always will be, an obsession for me.
Yet when I went looking for it, it seemed the world around me, handed me a formula of where to find. The princess formula. Or as others like to call it, The Princess Complex. Every movie I ever watched validated it. My family perpetuated the belief and the patriarchal society I lived in sent subliminal messages to me constantly verifying it was true. How could I have not fallen for the trap?
Here’s the message of The Princess Complex: You are a broken, inferior girl who yes, is inherently precious underneath, but that value will only be realised when a prince comes along and saves you. It’ll be because he sees beauty in you that will make you precious. His arms will rescue you. His love will support you. His adoration will give you value, and his wealth will validate you. His, his and his! To be precious, to be loved, to find connection, you must gain the approval of a man. The divine, flawless and ordained Prince. For each of us, that Prince may take many forms. He’s more of an idea than a person really. Although some men take his shape better than others.
Becoming the Princess
I was never the textbook princess. I wasn’t dainty, elegant, meek or gracious. I was a force of nature as a child who engaged in more sword fights, daring rescues and rolling in the mud than my three brothers put together. I was uncouth and untamed. I thrived under pressure, loved a challenge and questioned everything.
I tried so hard to curb that instinct in me and instead set my sights on becoming whimsical, attractive and impressive. What being these things found me was approval, who is sadly, just a distant, ugly cousin of love. They are most certainly not the same thing!
Ah, but I thought perhaps my princess efforts weren’t finding love because I lacked one critical princess element. Vulnerability! I have always generally been competent, resilient and motivated. I am not an inherently vulnerable person. Yet, I have become one. For one simple reason, nothing seems to draw in a man like a damsel in distress.
So I took on the ‘true love’ message of the world and I become an embodiment of what a good princess should be: charming, meek, whimsical, impressive and most importantly, vulnerable. But despite my most diligent efforts, my true nature would often slip through the cracks, and when it did, I felt ashamed.
The Damage to Prince Charming
Through years of strain and contradiction, I had become a mixture of my untameable, wild nature and my learnt submissive demeanour. When I met my Prince Charming, I pushed harder into what I thought was expected of me. I leant into my princess expectations in the hope they would attract his love. I put an expectation on him to rescue me, to protect me and to hold the world in place for me. I flaunted my vulnerability in front of him and in doing so, robbed him of his own.
I see now how unfair that was and am humbled by my own contribution to the pain of the man I love. Yet, I condition it on the premise that his intimate, genuine connection was all I ever sought, and I was following some really faulty instructions on how to get it.
The most powerful tool on earth for change, is friendship. It was the burly, honest and resilient love of friends that helped me break the hold of my complex. Women who listened to my hurts and complaints and who rather than urged me to be submissive, demanded my wellbeing and validated my complaints. They gave me a love that was enough. A love that made me feel worth and value and they were not men. They were not my Prince Charming and yet they gave to me everything I was told was reserved only for my ethereal prince. The Princess Complex cannot stand against the strength and love of other women!
Thus, my realisation and my resolve were born. I don’t want to be like this anymore. I don’t want to hinge my happiness on the approval and adoration of men. I want to be free to find intimate, deep connection in so many places, not just in my prince. I want to find it in my friends, in my family, in my community and in the lives I shape and the lives that shape me. Most importantly, I want to find it in myself.
I want to love from one human to another, free of constructs and expectations. Me in all my genuine nature loving them in all of theirs. I don’t want to seek men’s approval anymore. I want to seek their love, in all its beauty and trepidation. In all its joy and pain. In all its peace and turbulence.
And I want to belong to myself. I want to feel like my own arms are strong enough to hold myself up. I want to know that my own love supports me. I want to know that I have value in spite of adoration, and that it exists regardless of the validation of a prince. I want to well and truly throw away my quest for patriarchal approval and live untamed.
I want to raise my daughters to be free of this. I don’t want them to need the validation of men to find worth in themselves. I want them to have faith in their inherent beauty regardless of other people’s judgement of it. I want my son to see the value in vulnerability and not feel the need to hold up the world for others or judge himself by his ability to justify and control women.
I want my Mother to know that the world she was raised in wronged her. I want her to know that her everyday efforts were more important to me than the impressive achievements of the men in our family. I want her to know that her voice matters, that it is wise and that it doesn’t need a man to hear it for it to be influential. I want her to know that she is beautiful to me and that her wrinkles and aching muscles hold stories of resilience, devotion and strength and that there is not a human on earth who could compete with that kind of beauty.
I want my friends to know that I find them beautiful. That I see the way the light reflects off their hair in the morning or how their faces light up when they watch the sunset with me and that I am entranced by it. I want them to know that they don’t need to wait for the love of a man for that beauty to be acknowledged. I want them to know that when men reject them and fail them that it is not a reflection of who they are and that it does not change how beautiful, enthralling and captivating they are. I want them to know that the love of friendship can be strong enough to rival the love of a Prince Charming. I want them to know that their place in this world is meaningful, that they shape the lives of others and that they bring kindness and hope and that whether they find a man or not, this will never change.
We are always and completely enough.
Your Reformed Princess
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