The Last Princess

When I was a young girl, I used to love watching Disney movies with my sister. Not just any Disney movies, but the ones with princesses in them. And not princesses who were actually ogres who were actually princesses. No. Real princesses that dreamt of real princes on real white horses. Yes, I enjoyed our Saturday mornings. We would eat our concoctions that we called breakfast, sometimes consisting of English muffins with banana and cream cheese and peanut butter… while reading the Sunday comics that actually came on Saturday… and then we would pack our Barbies away in their travel cases and trudge them downstairs to set up in front of the 25 inch tube tv that always had on The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella or Aladdin. And so it went for weeks and months, the same routine.

As we grew older, we could always come back to these classics, but we noticed that the movies had changed. No longer did the movies end with princesses marrying their prince charmings in their long beautiful gowns. The princesses took on odd shapes and lost their delicateness. The princes became hunchbacks and ogres. And even though I could understand what the movie industry was doing as I got older, I didn’t like it. Sometimes, a girl just wants to see a princess: one that wears pink and sparkles and sings to animals in the forest.

And so he

re is my baby sister. She is as eccentric as they come. And as beautiful as they come. I remember when she was born, everyone talked about her big beautiful eyes. So I dropped her a few times… by accident of course. And boy was she trouble. She was always getting into trouble and I was always covering for her. Always taking care of the little monster. But today, now she’s all grown up. Except she’s not. She still has an unhealthy obsession with unicorns, a Tinkerbell poster hanging in her closet (don’t ask) and pink, sparkly curtains. And for a while I thought what an odd child. But now I think, we don’t have enough princesses in this world.

Because it’s not the sparkles or the unicorns that define her. It’s her childlike belief in happy endings, chivalry, gentleness and love. It’s her inability to understand where badness comes from. She can’t process ill-will. And she may be an odd creature. But she may just also be the last princess.