¡Lo Hicemos! A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, six beautiful princesses ruled a magical kingdom. They were some real tyrant-ass bitches. Vain about their looks, and paranoid about their power. Their names were Snow White, Jasmine, Cinderella, Belle, Aurora, and Ariel.

They used to rule separate kingdoms but one day got the idea of consolidating their power into one continuum, known as Princess, in order to rule the world. Merging their identities into one was not really a problem since they did not have fully articulated selves to begin with. To paraphrase Courtney Love, whom the Princess Continuum has classified among the Axis of Evil: they look the same, they act the same, they even fuck the same.

To wit: all Princesses have the same basic fairy tale story. Once upon a time, a beautiful girl was beset in some form or another (household drudgery, poison apple, various and sundry spells) by ugliness personified – often in the form of an older woman (stepmother, stepsister, witch, etc.) – who prevented her in some way from hooking up with the man of her dreams. Eventually, however, the girl’s beauty triumphed. She and the man were said to have lived happily ever after in hetero-normative pair-bonded bliss. The moral of the story, girls: don’t be smart, be pretty, and you too can catch a prince.

And yet: these men have not been heard from again since the formation of the Princess Continuum. But that does not mean the Magic Kingdom under Princess domination is some kind of feminist utopia. The Princess has instituted groupthink, groupspeak, and groupdress for girls. Mandatory pinks and purples, big hair and pastel eye shadow, sparkly shoes and tiaras, love of cupcakes and fear of dirt. All girls between the ages of four and six must go to Princess school, learn Princess history, play Princess games, sing Princess songs with an optional My Pretty Pony repertoire. At the Continuum’s formation, the Princess decided that in the Magic Kingdom, girls will rule and boys, well, they just drool. (Until they are called upon to be Princes and engage in the happily ever after rituals.) The problem is that the Princess allows only one definition of girl, and that definition is Princess.

Back to the issue of paranoia and the Axis of Evil thing. The Princess would not have to institute rules if it did not fear rule breakers. Way out on the Magic Kingdom’s margins lived a trio of girls who decided not to join the Princess Continuum. Tough, smart, dark-skinned girls who lived off their wits and thought there might be more to life than hooking up with some guy. Their names were Mulan, Pocahantas, and Dora.

It was Mulan who had the idea first, for she was a Warrior at heart. Pocahantas was happy just hanging out in the Everglades with the Seminoles. She knew the Princess would never go that far south – it was full of alligators, panthers, and snakes. Oh my!

“Pocahantas! Get off your ass and stop singing that damn song about painting with the colors of the wind!” Mulan yelled, banging on the side of her friend’s chickee one day. “It sounds like the Princess has gotten to you already.”

Pocahantas agreed that the Princess Continuum had grabbed too many girls and eaten up too much land. And why was no one asking questions about water in the Magic Kingdom? Its many lakes were dyed in Easter Egg blues.

“You’re absolutely right, Mulan. Those are not the colors of the wind! We must fight! We have to call Dora!” The two marched forth to their friend’s home.

“Wake up Shawtie!” Mulan and Pocahantas cried when they reached their friend’s hacienda. “We need the backpack!”

Dora agreed that the Princess Continuum had grabbed too many girls and eaten up too much land. And why was no one asking questions about the lack of real animals in the Magic Kingdom? There was only a scary presence of people in animal suits.

“You’re absolutely right, Mulan and Pocahantas. We must figure out how to get there and bring down the Princess Continuum. Let’s see what’s in the backpack! Look! A GPS and some weapons of mass destruction!”

So the three tough, smart, dark-skinned girls who lived off their wits and thought there might be more to life than hooking up with some guy divided up the weapons of mass destruction equally among themselves because they believed in the value of sharing. Then they turned over the GPS duties to Dora because she was the one with the best Explorer skills, and they set off for the Magic Kingdom.

The non-abridged version of this fairy tale details their brave exploits. Suffice to say, they made it to the Magic Kingdom safe and sound only to find that they did not have the ticket price to get in. They were momentarily flummoxed until Dora had an idea.

“Let’s look in the backpack!” she said. And sure enough, she found inside the $150 plus tax that they needed for entry.

“Yay!” all the brave girls cried, but soon their happiness dissolved into tears, for they saw that Dora’s backpack would be searched. The Princess Continuum’s security would find their weapons of mass destruction! What to do?

They were momentarily flummoxed until Mulan and Pocahantas simultaneously had an idea. They were older than Dora and knew about tampons.

“We shall hide them in our orifices!” they whispered, and indeed they did, backpack included. The girls walked in with their motives, and their weapons, undetected.

“Yay!” the brave girls cried, dancing about and squealing in high-pitched voices in order to look like all the girls who visit the Magic Kingdom. Now it was time to steal upon the castle.

The non-abridged version of this fairy tale details their brave exploits. Suffice to say, they made it to the castle safely, spirited over the moat with a rope-bridge from Dora’s backpack (removed carefully and sanitarily from Mulan’s orifices), and dynamited open the door (with ordnance removed carefully and sanitarily from the orifice of Pocahantas).

“Ka-Pow!” went the dynamite. When all was said and done, the two girl teams confronted each other, with the Princess Continuum headed up by Jasmine.

“What the fuck?” said Jasmine. The Princess Continuum stood behind her, either smiling or baring their teeth – with Princesses, especially the blonde ones, it’s sometimes hard to tell.

“What the fuck?” said Mulan and Pocahantas. Dora was too young to say “fuck,” so she hung back.

“How’d a dark-skinned girl get to be a Princess?” Mulan asked.

“They let in a Muslim too?” Pocahantas wanted to know.

“Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” Jasmine said in a robot-like voice.

Dora sensed the presence of real evil. Not the devil kind of evil, but the banal kind the Hannah Arendt described. She held her backpack close and tiptoed behind the ruins of the castle door. She did not see everything that went on, but she heard the scuffling, biting, scratching, hair-pulling, and meowing. Her brave warrior friends Mulan and Pocahantas were losing the battle!

Dora opened her backpack. All the weapons of mass destruction were inside! What to do? She could blow up the Magic Kingdom, but everyone would die. Even her friends! Even Dora herself!

But wait? What was that? Dora heard a small voice, coming from a spider web by what was left of the door. “Help me!” it cried. It had wings and a human head. Was it a fly? A person? No! It was a fairy! Tinkerbell! Dora lifted her tiny new friend from the wreckage.

“I thought you were one of them,” she asked.

“No,” Tinkerbell said. “I wasn’t good enough for their Princess mythology, descending from both fairy and commoner lineage. You can look up my history on Wikipedia. Let’s bring ‘em down!”

Dora looked over to where the battle continued. Her brave warrior friends lay at the bottom of a Princess pile, being slowly transmogrified into plastic. There was no choice. She left her backpack with its weapons of mass destruction in the corner, and Tinkerbell lifted her up into the air. After they rose above the castle, the fairy sprinkled her pixie dust onto the backpack, making it explode into the biggest fireworks display that the Magic Kingdom’s visitors had ever seen. All of Florida’s I-4 corridor cheered, not realizing what was going on.

And yet: the Princess Continuum was not destroyed, for it was indeed made of ultra-durable plastic that endures both in reality and in the hearts and minds of girls everywhere. Any girl between the age of four and six is liable to fall victim to its groupthink, groupspeak, and groupdress. What Jasmine said to Mulan and Pocahantas is partially true. Resistance is somewhat futile, and you may indeed be assimilated. Poor Mulan and Pocahantas – once brave warriors – are now Princesses. And a new black girl, Tiana, is slated for assimilation in 2009. You can look all this up on Wikipedia.

The non-abridged version of this fairy tale could continue. Suffice to say, there is still hope in the form of Dora and even little Tinkerbell. The smart girls and the ones who’ll never quite fit the mold. The ones who always seem, paraphrasing Audre Lorde – another member of the Princess’s Axis of Evil – to have the right tool in their backpack for bringing down the master’s house. And the ones who wind up working within the system to subvert it in a different way, with a bit of poison pixie dust perhaps.

Parents, teach your children. Girls, keep your backpacks ready. Boys, stop drooling so much.