All Girls Are Princesses

In my freshman year of high school, when I was first becoming interested in lolita fashion, I came across a blog called The Princess Portal. At that time, the blog had already been taken down, but parts of it were still preserved via archive.org. This blog, or what parts of it I could scavenge from the archives of the internet, changed my life. It is the reason why, 9 years later I am writing my own blog.

My story is hardly unique. A quick Google search on the Princess Portal yields more than a few posts from bloggers reminiscing about the site, with very similar sentiments as mine. I have seen posts as recent as just a few months ago, even though the blog itself was taken down in 2009.

What is the Princess Portal and why did it profoundly affect so many people? The driving force behind the Portal was its philosophy: that anybody can be a Princess. These words, so simple yet so powerful, inspire me to this day. It makes me feel as if I were seeing the world through the rose-colored lenses of my childhood, as if fairytales could be real.

Perhaps the most memorable part of The Princess Portal was the Princess Code. It is a list of guiding principles for aspiring Princesses to follow. (You can still read the Code by clicking the banner below.) Some parts of it might seem frivolous, like having to be given fresh flowers everyday. But the underlying message is one of kindness: both kindness to yourself, and kindness to others.

Although The Princess Portal was immensely popular in its day, Princess Skye (the creator) also received a lot of backlash. Hateful pages and threads were created online, and she was ridiculed for being silly, childish, and snobby. Strangely enough, this part of the story is inspiring to me as well. It is a reminder of an important truth in life: No matter how kind you are, no matter how good your intentions are, not everybody will understand or like you.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the parallels between The Princess Portal, and one of my favorite books, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The former is a lifestyle blog from 10 years ago while the latter is a fictional children’s book written in the early 1900s, so it may seem strange to compare them at all. But I think the underlying messages are very similar. A Little Princess is one of those timeless children’s classics that can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of age. On the surface, it may seem quite cute and fanciful, but it is really relatively dark and complex for a children’s story.

This is a very well-known story but I will provide a rough summary: Sara Crewe is left in London in a boarding school for girls. It’s meant to be a temporary situation, as Sara’s mother is deceased and her father must go off to the Army in India. But a few months after coming to the school she learns that her father lost all his money and died of yellow fever. Once a very wealthy and spoiled girl, the envy of her classmates, she is now a penniless orphan. This leaves her vulnerable to abuse from the terrible headmaster of the school as well as bullies in her class.

The magic of the book is Sara herself, and how pure her character remains throughout these hardships. She is more intelligent than her fellow classmates but she never looks down on them. She enchants those around her with her kindness and her sense of wonder. When she hardly has enough to eat herself she gives bread to a beggar child who is even worse off than herself. Throughout the course of the story she goes from rich, to poor, to rich again and remains consistently kind and strong no matter her external circumstances. All that Sara Crewe is, aligns so well with the concept of what a Princess is according to the Princess Code.

I fear I am still vain in many ways. I fear that when I think of my ideal self I often think of the external details: a beautiful wardrobe, clear skin, and bright eyes. But The Princess Code and Sara Crewe will always remind me that being a Princess comes from within, and I shall strive to be a Princess for the rest of my life.