Great article by Helen Pilinovsky over at Fantasy Magazine:
Princess. These days, it’s practically an epithet, but when the fairy tale was at its zenith, there was a clear correlation between hereditary rank and innate worth. Somehow, despite the shift in our values, there’s a certain segment of the population that is still held by the spell of the fairy tale princess. It’s not the fans of fairy tale retellings—who tend to subvert the princess—but little girls and their mothers, a demographic targeted by Disney. Between the two extremes, the princess occupies an uneasy territory between traditional values, progress, and reclamation. From word-of-mouth storytelling to printed texts to cinematic adaptations, the princess has been defined and redefined in remarkable ways.