How to Become a Princess Part 1: Admit You Have a Problem

Note: This is the first portion of a 3-part series.

Okay, I admit it. I have a problem…a problem with princesses.

I know what you’re expecting me to say next. “Oh my god guys, I am SO obsessed with Disney princesses! All I’ve ever wanted to be in all of my life is a princess! And wear pretty dresses and a tiara and have plucky sidekicks!”

That would be an incorrect assumption. Minus the plucky minions sidekicks.

Anyone who has spent even a small amount of time with me knows that, in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

By having a “problem” with princesses, I mean, in short, I have an issue with them.

I’m not sure exactly when the adulation stopped and the loathing started. Certainly as a young child I liked Ariel and Princess Jasmine as much as I liked Scuttle and Abu and the Genie. (Well, maybe not as much as I liked the Genie. My obsession with Robin Williams started with Mork & Mindy and has only gotten more intense with time.)  But by the time I was in high school, a change had occurred.

And maybe because by then, the Disney Princess thing was really starting to take hold of society in a all-encompassing, scary kind of way. Every little girl wants to be a princess! Every little girl wants to dress up in pink and sparkly dresses! Wear a tiara! Value getting married over being intelligent and self-sufficient!

No wonder I’ve always liked the villains.

In fact, I’m obsessed with Disney villains like most females are obsessed with Disney princesses.

Gasp! Why? The villains are the bad guys! They’re evil! You shouldn’t like evil!

The answer to that is, yes, they’re evil, some more than others. But there’s also something they have–especially the female villains–that is completely absent from all Disney princess movies made until very recently.

Think about every single, intelligent woman of means portrayed in a major Disney animated movie made before, say, 2005. Are you thinking? Did you come up with some?

Here’s my list:

1. The Evil Queen (Snow White)
2. The Evil Stepmother (Cinderella)
3. Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty)
4. Ursula (The Little Mermaid)
5. Cruella De Vil (101 Dalmations)
6. Winifred, Mary and Sarah Sanderson (Hocus Pocus) (okay, not animated, but still Disney, and you’ll see why I included them in a moment.)

Notice a pattern? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t come up with a single (pun intended) intelligent woman of means from a Disney movie created in my formative years that was not a villain.

Now, there are a handful of fairy characters that fit the intelligent, single women of means bill, but most of them only serve as a deus ex machina to save the princess’s helpless butts when they need it most (Fairy Godmother from Cinderella comes to mind), so I’m not sure they really count. Also, they tend to be old and tubby and like a fussy maiden aunt in an Elizabeth Gaskill novel. No 10-year-old-girl wants to grow up to be a lady from Cranford. But the villains? They were cool.

An obsession was born.

Now, I won’t lie; I like me a pretty sparkly dress, and the princesses definitely one-up the villains in this category (except Cruella. Especially the live-action, Glen Close Cruella. Best outfits. Also best car.) The princesses also had the funny minions sidekicks, like Scuttle, who rocks (incidentally, that’s what’s in his head!). The sidekicks minions of the villains never seemed to be as cool (except Iago. There’s always an exception.) So the princesses win out on those categories.

But the villains–specifically the female villains–had something more, something I could really identify with as I grew and developed into the person we all sort-of tolerate today: a big-ass personality.

That attitude, that spunk, that desire for something more than a boring, one-dimensional prince drew me toward the villains. That, and Cruella’s car. Have I mentioned her car? It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.

In short, I like the bad guys. And have for some time.

I also like Halloween. A lot.

And so I get to the actual point of this post: I’ve done my share of Disney Villain Halloween costumes.

From 2016: Ursula!

Building Ursula was a blast. The skirt is made of white silk which I first hand-painted with tentacles before sewing into a skirt. The corset I hand-built of silk and cotton. Figuring out and doing the makeup was a BLAST, even if the first attempt made me look more like an 80’s rocker than Ursula. And I still bring out the Floatsam and Jetsam puppets (which I made out of leg warmers and spare bits of t-shirt) when parties get dull, or I really want to annoy someone. Ahem.

From 2017: Winifred Sanderson!

(Now you see why I mentioned her)

Winnie. Oh, Winnie. My hero. The boss, the brains, the booOOOOOOOOk!! My idol. Who doesn’t love Winifred Sanderson? I made the underskirt out of cotton crepe (purposefully made to transition into a wearable, every day skirt.) The coat I hand-built from white cotton; first I modified a store-bought pattern to build the basic shape, then hand-dyed it using fiber reactive dyes and finally hand-painted all of the runes. The crushed velvet over-skirt and crocheted gauntlets were also hand made (by me).

I don’t know what the hell this pose/face is, and half of it’s blurry, but here’s a better look at the full costume:

The wig was a challenge–it was originally a Brave wig that I re-styled–and the irony isn’t lost on me. The shirt is a converted t-shirt with grommets and a modesty panel inserted in the front. I wanted to be as cool as possible (literally) because October in Texas is HOT. This allowed me to avoid sweating my ass off into my beverage.

…Er. Figuratively.

This obsession even dates back to High School. Back then my resources (fabric, sewing experience, and financial) were all limited, but I still managed to pull off a pretty awesome Cruella. One of these days, I’m going to re-visit her.

From Senior Year of High School: Cruella!

Terrible picture, with awful lighting and a horrendous mirror glare, from a very long time ago…but you get the idea.

The villain thing was so established that by last year, when I was contemplating what costume to make for Halloween, every suggestion someone made to me was a Disney villain. Maleficent was the most frequent; second was Cruella. I was even considering some others myself–Oogie Boogie, and the Queen of Hearts.

Whoops.

I realized it was time to break the pattern. I don’t like to be predictable. I don’t like to do the expected. Time was limited by this point, so I ended up with Medusa, something I wanted to do for a long time…and decided that next year, things would be even more different:

This year, I’m gonna be a ~*princess*~

Well, kind of. I’m going to be Belle. Taco Belle.

Get ready, y’all.

On to Part 2: Making Decisions and Making it Rain