A controversial set of photos has been making its way across the feminist blogosphere, namely "Fallen Princesses" by Dina Goldstein. As y'all know, I'm simultaneously fascinated and repelled by the whole princess thing in our culture and so I was very excited to check out this series of photos. The premise was promising: knock the old archetype off of Prince Charming's very high horse and give it a dose of postmodern reality. Instead it seems (in my opinion at least) uninspired execution has left us with some very unchallenging and postfeminist messages.
Mo Pie of Big Fat Deal had much to say on the fattening of Little Red Riding Hood, and there's an excellent discussion at Racialicious about what it means that Jasmine is now taking up arms in a vaguely Middle Eastern conflict zone.
A commenter at Racialicious, a certain Mistress Scorpio (thanks!), shared a link to another gallery of altered princesses. This one is called "Twisted Princesses" and though the intent is obviously different, I'd like to make some comparisons. Dina Goldstein is trying to make social commentary with hers, while I think Jeffrey Thomas' intent is more to subvert the sparkly princess stereotype and just make them more kickass. Nonetheless, both are presenting an alternative to the golly-gosh Disney princess and I think it's interesting to see how they do it differently. So tell me: which do you prefer? "Fallen" or "Twisted" Jasmine?
Thomas is sticking to Disney canon and thus hasn't made a Little Red Riding Hood, but what about Snow White? "Fallen" or "Twisted"?
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