The Princess Diaries

The Princess Diaries

Walt Disney Pictures

Film released 2001

Director: Gary Marshall

Writer: Gina Wedkos

Based on the books by Meg Cabot

Starring: Julie Andrews, Anne Hathaway, Hector Elizondo, Heather Matarazzo, Mandy Moore, that guy from Brink, Sandra Oh!

Rated: G

Grade:  4/5

Not another TWEEN movie! Let’s take a queer look at that old favorite, The Princess Diaries.

Can you believe this was Anne Hathaway’s big film debut? Neither can I. ALSO JULIE ANDREWS FTW! Btw, did you know that Whitney Houston was a producer on this? Cool, right?

Now that I’m done fangirling over the powerhouse actors in this movie, let’s get on with it.

First, let’s get a few things straight (wink wink). If you were a tween during the late 90s/early 2000s, then you might have been obsessed with the original books series (like me). 

'Sup Meg Cabot

There were a few things that the movie didn’t get quite right that I want to point out quickly. Whether or not they contribute to the movie’s queerness, eh idk, you can be the judge of that. The two biggest things you need to know are 1) Mia’s dad isn’t dead, he was just kind of an absent father until they had to tell her about the whole Princess thing. Ultimate uncool dad move. And 2) the grandmother in the books is actually a horrible human being that Mia hates and she has tattooed eyebrows that gave me nightmares. Ugh. These changes make sense for the movie’s story arc, but what I liked about the original books was Mia’s rebellious, fuck the man, attitude, and she really loses that in the movie. Having her dad die instead of just being absent puts a sentimentality and “excusable reason” on her rebellion, which lessens Mia’s queerness. And the grandmother (if memory serves me, I think she had to call her grandmere?) served as an antagonistic figure on whom Mia could throw her frustrations. As much as I love Julie Andrews, the conflict between traditional norms/the strictures of being royal and Mia wanting to be a normal freaky teenager get diluted.

Anyway, on to the film.

Mia is so very queer. She and her bestie Lily Moscovitz (the awesome and OUT Heather Matarazzo) are outsiders at their high school. 

Who's that dude messing up our bestie pic?

They look at the popular, uber-hetero, kids with admiration and disgust; that particular mixture of feelings only present in the teenage mind when you still gave two fucks about your popularity status (right?). Mia is invisible and weird to her classmates. She pukes during her public speaking class and gets laughed out the door. She’s awkward and clumsy, not to mention the glasses and untameable hair. She’s invisible, crushing on cool-guy-douchebag Josh from afar, wishing she wasn’t queer, and wishing for the popular kids’ normalcy. It’s hard out there for a queer.

But Mia’s got some things going for her. She lives in an abandoned firehouse (LITERALLY THE COOLEST THING EVER) with her artist mom whose idea of a night in is throwing darts at water balloons full of paint, 

Take that patriarchy!

and she works part time at a rock climbing place. Her life isn’t really as bad as she makes it out to be. Despite her frustrations, her queer life is actually pretty cool.

Then, everything changes. Julie Andrews comes to town and tells her she’s next in line for the throne of Genovia. Oof. This little queer girl is a bonafide princess. You can’t get much more normative and traditional than a princess, no matter whether you are talking about fairytales or IRL royalty. The whole movie ends up being about Mia’s identity and her queerness battling the normative expectations closing in on her life.

Here are the two things I want to look at with this.

First, the big beauty transformation. Hellooooooo Anne Hathaway.

bow chika wow wow

What’s telling here is her reaction to the makeover. It makes her super uncomfortable. She gets really defensive when Lily sees her new ‘do. And when she gets to school she doesn’t want to show off her new look, she hides it all under a hat. When someone finally steals the hat off her head, her newfound normative beauty makes heads turn. People start to notice her, but it’s not really what she wants. She doesn’t know what to do now that she’s no longer invisible. She’s lost some of her queerness and she’s having a hard time adjusting. She’s starting to conform to normative beauty standards and it feels weird, unnatural even.

Next, her decision to become a princess (after she tries to run away). I’m not so interested in the whole legacy, father part of the storyline. I want to focus on how Mia eventually comes to terms with her queerness and this new normative world she must navigate.  The defining moment here is when she smears ice cream all over popular-girl Lana’s (Mandy Moore in her early 2000s prime) pristine cheerleading outfit. Mia decides that, after the whole beach party/Josh fiasco, there are parts of the normative world she doesn’t want to participate in. The part that’s frivolous and fake and judgemental and basically just awful. Instead (and after quite a bit of turmoil), she decides to take advantage of the position she has been handed within the normative world. She decides to use her queerness to infiltrate and invade that normative world. She decides to “care about the other 7 billion people out there instead of just [her].” She decides to be an advocate and voice for the people. She realizes how much power she has access to and that she can use that power for good.  I think this is an incredible model for how those with enormous privilege should use their voices to lift up those 7 billion+ people who do not have the same power/resources/rights/etc. You go girl!

As you wish, Julie Andrews

MVQ: Mia’s mom! She’s the coolest. I mean the paint-balloon thing! The firehouse! Genius.

OTP: Lily and Mia. Does a ship name for them exist? Mily? Lia?

Favorite Moment: Mia coning Lana!

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants

Warner Bros.

Film released 2005

Director: Ken Kwapis

Writer: Delia Ephron & Elizabeth Chandler

Based on the books by Ann Brashares

Starring: Amber Tamblyn, Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, and Blake Lively

Rated: PG

Grade: 4/5

Every once in a while I’m gonna do a post about TWEEN ENTERTAINMENT! Let’s kick off the first one with a little Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants.

I loved this movie as I was growing up (I even read the books, which are about as decent as tween books get). Why? BECAUSE IT FEATURES 4! Yes, 4! FEMALE PROTAGONISTS who have a deep, meaningful friendship.

Some queer topics covered in the movie include positive female friendships (duh), alternative family structures, mental health issues and suicide, consent, privilege, body positivity, and able-ism stigmas.  Let’s get cracking.

First, there’s the premise: 4 diverse young female friends can all fit into the same pair of jeans. In the scene where they try them on, Carmen makes a big deal out of her being the biggest of the girls and puts them on to prove that there is no way they’ll fit her as she slips them on with no struggle. So. Much. Body positivity! This scene says that what ever your body type, you are perfect for these jeans. The movie’s metaphor for the bonds of friendship literally and figuratively embraces each girl’s differences. Man. This movie was kinda ahead of its time.

The girls start off as typical female tropes: there’s the quite artistic one, the loud Hispanic writer, the sardonic filmmaking rebel, and the beautiful blonde athlete. But we learn that these girls are far more than their stereotypes suggest.

Let’s talk about the girls individually.

First, Lena: the quiet artistic one. 

'Sup, Rory?

She’s probably the least queer (read: interesting) of them all. She gets the classic love story where she falls for the foreign Greek charmer (God the actor’s accent is horrible) despite her shy nature. Her storyline follows her trip to visit her Greek family on the beautiful island Santorini (I mostly watch her sections for the landscape, tbh) and the love story. As she falls for Kostos she discovers her love for drawing and metaphorically (and literally, seeing as this is a tween movie, subtlety is not within genre) lets her hair down. He totally awakens her sexuality, which is seriously empowering, watching her take control of her body as a young woman is invigorating. Her trip to Greece reminds me of the camps I would go to during the summers in high school where I could discover who I was outside the comfort zone of my family and school. That’s where I figured out I was gay. That’s where Lena figured out she is an artist, and a proud woman.

Second, Tibby: the sarcastic filmmaking rebel. 

Get me out of the service industry!

Personally, I always thought she was gay. Her relationship with Brian, the geeky video game kid, always felt like an after thought. I also love her sassy sarcastic humour that I can totally relate to, so maybe I’m projecting, but that’s pretty much all this blog is…Anyway, her story is a different kind of love story. Tibby’s story is about Bailey, my absolute favourite character. The headstrong girl next door, wise beyond her years, who we find out is dying of cancer. It’s heavy heavy stuff. But it’s one of the most honest portrayals of a terminally ill young person before John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars finally came around. And I’d say being a kid with cancer totally qualifies as a queerness outside of the healthy norm. Tibby’s relationship with Bailey changes her for the better and not just in a cheesy way. Bailey teaches her true compassion. She makes Tibby a better artist and a better human as they go about their days interviewing people with seemingly weird and mundane lives who turn out to have fascinating stories and passions. We could all stand to learn something from Bailey.

Next, Bridget. The blonde athlete. And total tomboy femme. 

Ooooooo baraccuda

Let’s just take a moment to appreciate how damn beautiful Blake Lively is. Ok? Done? I’ll give you another minute. Man, did I have a crush on Bridget. And she has the most complex story by far. She’s the beautiful extroverted blonde athlete whose life seems perfect from the outside, but she’s got some serious demons. We find out pretty early on that her mother committed suicide (while it’s not said explicitly, it’s heavily implied) and suffered from what the book outlines as Bipolar Disorder. Bridget’s storyline opens up an interesting discussion of mental health and dealing with grief. She struggles to understand what her mother went through, why she killed herself, and if she is like her mother. This movie gets so many points for the mental health discussion, which movies for tweens rarely explore, especially in the early 2000s. We can also look at her relationship with Eric, the older counsellor she has a fling with at soccer camp and loses her virginity to. Oh man. This is complex. First of all, she explicitly tells him that she is 17, and he’s in college, so I’m pretty sure that’s illegal statutory rape… The whole relationship is forbidden from the start, but she pursues him anyway. And when they finally hook up, she starts a downward depression-riddled spiral. There’s a nice opportunity for a discussion about consent here which the story doesn’t really take up, which is definitely an oversight, but it at least acknowledges the fallout and the emotional consequences Bridget faces when she leaves soccer camp. I think they actually start a serious relationship in the books, or something like that, but don’t quote me on that.

Finally, Carmen: the loud Hispanic girl. 

Ugly Betty as a teen! 

She’s got some alternative family structure going on. Her white father left her mother when she was young and this summer she’s going to live with him for a month. She finds that he’s shacked up with a pretty blonde white woman and her porcelain son and daughter. Here’s our complicated depiction of class, race, and privilege: queer versus norm. This storyline is the most direct conflict between these two worlds. Carmen feels completely out of place in her dad’s new whitewashed world that she runs away from her embarrassing bridesmaid dress fitting and throws a rock at her dad’s window when she sees them all sitting down to a nice dinner like she never even ran off. She tells her dad that he was a dick for not telling her about his fiancé (true), that it felt like he was erasing her from his life, and that he is embarrassed by his half-Hispanic daughter and her mother. This phone confrontation is totally heart-wrenching. The end of the film (spoilers!) takes us to her dad’s wedding where she swallows her pride and publicly joins him and his fiancé at the altar as her dad brings her into his new family. I don’t know what that says exactly about race and class and privilege and all that, but Carmen’s story opens up a dialogue about mixed race families, the racial stigmas, complications, and personal struggles that come along with it. I honestly don’t know if another narrative like this exists because this topic can be unsettling and the film really doesn’t shy away from the plot in the books (if my memory is at all reliable).

All in all, powerful movie about positive female friendships and there’s so much complex queerness that it’s almost overwhelming. It covers so many bases in each of the girls’ storylines that there’s a little queerness for everyone. I just wish one of them had a coming out story. That would have been the cherry on top.

OTP: Tibby and Bridget. Do I need to explain that one?

MVQ: Bailey. No competition.

Favorite Moment: When the girls all go over to Bridget’s with pizza to cheer her up.