It’s Friday night and you and a friend plan for a “Girls Night Out.” You are beyond painting each other’s toenails and doing hair, and you are tired of the bar scene…suddenly your friend says, “Let’s do something really girly…let’s go see a CHIC FLICK!” In her excitement you realize she fails to remember she barely has enough money in the bank to buy a lollipop, nevermind a ticket to a movie. She’s too excited to calm down…the ink on her hand from the newspaper is too much… “The Prince and Me is playing at 7:05 or 8:20 p.m., which would you rather?” Oh, I have a choice in the matter? Let’s see, Jeopardy! starts at 7, “let’s do the later one”…hopefully it will be emptier and fewer witnesses to me actually purchasing a ticket to a some barely-fairytale. As we drive there…I’m debating whether I’m going against what Women’s Lib protested about, “Is it right of me to see a movie where boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl falls in love with boy, and oh-by-the-way he’s the Prince of Denmark…” All those lies we were told as small children growing up, portrayed on the big screen. “When you grow up, you’ll marry a prince, and you’ll live in a huge castle and you’ll live happily ever after.” Stop right there. Our parents lied to us…about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and about growing up and finding a prince of our own to marry. So, of course I’ll use my college ID for a student discount—unfortunately, no “Prince Charming” rode up on a white horse, parked my ’96 Saturn for me and paid for my ticket.
Sitting through the previews, I said to my friend, “You realize that we don’t teach our girls to be independent? I mean, our moms did a pretty decent job, but, in general, we flood their minds with lies and confusing banter about the stereotypical woman and then a show like Sex in the City comes on where the four characters are supposedly these strong independent women who always fight for themselves but wind up losing something to a guy?”
“No!” She replied, “If we still filled their heads with the ‘stereotypical woman’ we’d all be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen without jobs wondering when we could next scrub the bathroom for fun.” True. Women have come a long way, but the question came down to, “What am I doing in this movie theatre?”
The movie started. The audience slowly silenced themselves. It was pretty crowded considering it was Good Friday. Shouldn’t all these people be in church? Shouldn’t I? Not as many teenage girls as I expected…in fact, men in their twenties were there…they must have lost a bet to their girlfriend or something. Our two main characters, Julia Stiles and the decently-hot looking dude playing the Prince of Denmark with a British accent wind up meeting each other at the University of Wisconsin. How appropriate, the land of cheese. Through no fault of his own, Prince Edward, in his college years now known as “Eddie” sees America through the eyes of the director of “Girls Gone Wild.” First mistake: asking Paige Morgan (Stiles) to take off her shirt. Second mistake: still sitting in the movie theatre.
And a coincidence that only Hollywood could conjure up, they have to be lab partners in Organic Chem! While Eddie is on a half vacation/half education self-financed trip known to the world as just another guy, and not next-in-line to the throne, Paige is on the straight and narrow to med school. His flirting is less than tolerable…and then he recites Shakespeare.
OK, ladies, how many times have you been surprised in a bar where some guy with a missing tooth comes up to you, only to swoon you with a line from Romeo and Juliet? Hmmm, just as I suspected.
Yadda, yadda, yadda, Eddie and Paige have been making googly-eyes at each other long enough, you’re expecting a fake-romantic kiss? Keep waiting. Paige asks Eddie home with her to her family’s farm for Thanksgiving. Eddie enters and wins a tractor race, appropriate for Danish Royalty. The family loves him, what could possibly go wrong?
Well, besides the fact that someone in wardrobe overlooked Wisconsin’s weather report for the end of November and all of the characters are wearing short sleeves, Paige finds out, thanks to the Paparazzi, that Eddie is a prince. Hollywood drama in three, two, one: she yells and screams in the rain that he lied to her. Well, technically, she never ASKED him if he was the Prince of Denmark, so really he didn’t lie to her.
By the time Paige realizes that she loves Eddie for Eddie he has already left home for Denmark. She rushes to the airport with one bag (that’s right…what female packs only ONE BAG for anything? ) and jumps on a plane and fights through a crowd to see Eddie.
Unless I have a chronological disorder, it is the same semester as Thanksgiving, and right after finals…you think, December? Christmas? Cold? No…short sleeves again. Paige’s popularity due to the publishing of the Paparazzi pictures, gets her to the front of the parade, where Eddie swoops her up onto his white horse and they ride off into the sunset.
There’s still an HOUR OF MOVIE LEFT…bla bla bla, they get together they break up…you’re like “oh no, the girl next to me is crying into her popcorn.”
I realized, it’s only a movie, but it’s still that little fantasy that every little girl plays into. It’s not the media that tells our girls to be skinny, it is the girls themselves telling themselves to wait for their prince to slip the glass slipper on and ride off into the sunset.
We keep that imagery with us because it’s our right to escape from reality. So, you aren’t going to be America’s Next Top Model…you probably aren’t going to be Homecoming Queen either. But is it really truly upsetting when you look at your boyfriend after the movie and realize he’ll never be the Prince of Denmark.
However, if he’s the prince of your heart, then it’s ok to not be perfect…be a size two, be the smartest or the prettiest, because in the long run, you finally realize, it’s your imperfections that make you perfect, and ain’t no tiara going to prove that!