Sat in a car shop today,waiting on an oil change. CNN, aka Corporate No News, was running a 24/7 gushfest about the Royal Spawn having arrived Crowds are outside the hospital, Men in silly ass costumes are making official pronouncements. It’s all so very lovely and soft and cute.

I’m going to rain on that parade right now, and hard. I hate, hate, hate, and oh yeah, hate, the American public’s obsession with the British Monarchy. I bet you if you stopped a dozen people on the street, half could name either Chuck and Di, or Will and Kate. How many could name the current U.K. Prime Minister, the one with actual power? (Hint: it’s David Cameron). I could rant for days about that fact as a symptom of America’s force-fed celebrity worshiping culture, but that’s a subject for another day.

It didn’t used to be like this. Before ABC Network went and turned Chuck and Di’s wedding into a TV spectacle, the only time you heard about royalty in America was when one got drunk and landed in the Enquirer. But nope, once America saw DIana, it was love at first sight. I understood the love. She was the first British Princess in a Century who didn’t look like an extra from Deliverance dragged out of the swamp and shined up for the cameras. All those royal families have interbred for centuries,and by the time Charles rolled off the assembly line, the gene pool was more like a puddle.  So she came along and stole America’s heart. I will say that she was the first royal in centuries with a conscience, and who walked her talk. No wonder she divorced Charles. She must have gotten a look at Elizabeth’s true black little heart and  tried right then to skip out of town. If you think Elizabeth is a nice lady, you don’t know your history, or don’t have Irish relatives. I have both. She was gone too soon, and then the royals disappeared off the radar for a good twenty years.

But then came William and Kate. In a new age of constant news sourcing, another good looking royal couple was good for  constant fill for the info-trough. I’ll admit, they had a nice wedding.It sure looked pretty. And now they have a pretty little bouncing boy.

My wife will read this and be appalled. My late grandmother would have been as well. Have you no sense of romance? Don’t you love the pomp and circumstance?She was an anglo-phile before the word was invented. But my problem isn’t really with the two of them or their kid personally. Nope, it’s because after four girls,most of whom are grown now, I feel comfortable enough to say this loud and clear:

I HATE PRINCESSES.

I can’t stand monarchy, honestly, but princesses, and what they represent in Western culture, piss me off. They reinforce the idea of “all you need to do is marry the right rich guy and all will be well” . That kind of thinking sets both women and men back decades, if not centuries. The fact that Disney has built an empire off of that degrading concept infuriates me. Show me a Disney Princess who isn’t needy,co-dependent, and miserable until Mr. RIght and Rich comes along.  Brave doesn’t count, because it was Pixar. And even then, according to the creator of Brave(A woman who was booted off her own movie) they tried all the time to push for a romance in the film. Gods forbid a woman stand on her own and make it by her smarts, hard work, and strength. I watched the co-dependent 50’s housewife bile destroy my mother and countless other women in this country.

Turn off the TV, some of you will say. Oh I will. But it’s good to know what’s out there, folks. If you think Patriarchy and the co-dependent ideas shilled by Disney don’t matter, then you haven’t seen your local legislature at work. All those anti-abortion bills are just stepping stones toward making a woman’s body not her own. So many of those folks are loving the whole Will/Kate thing, while pushing for a day when Kate will have to obey WIlliam under law.  The idea that women are less  strong than men is beyond stupid. Five minutes in a delivery room will change your mind forever on that bile.

I want a better path for the girls of tomorrow. I want my daughter to look into a camera one day and quote from Robert Ludlum’s The Road to Gandolfo: “He taught me to be my own inventory” . I want girls who are empowered, who shine like the stars they are. I don’t want princesses, paraded around like show ponies. I want prime minister and presidents, not people who claim right to rule by which birth canal they shot out of.  Yes, little girls love to dress up, and wear tiaras. But start them off right. Tell them to be queens and empresses, to rule their own minds and hearts, and no one elses. To be equal to kings and presidents. To be the heroes of their own stories. Like the shirt says,”This Princess rescues herself!”

And as usual, bonus points for who figures out where the blog title comes from.