“He should treat you like a princess.” I have seen this advice on many relationship blogs and advice columns written by men and women who have determined that a quality, healthy relationship involves women being pampered like royalty. I don’t buy it.
Being called a princess, or any comparison to royalty, is not a compliment nor a desired way to be treated in a relationship. Princesses are powerless figure-heads with a false sense of entitlement born from a well-protected bloodline or marriage. From girlhood, Disney sells the princess fantasy, packaging happily-ever-afters as a rich man with a big house. I’ll pass on the glass slippers because I don’t want to be compared to or treated like Marie Antoinette or Anne Boleyn or be waited on hand-and-foot by a one-dimensional Prince Charming.
There is no room for self-actualization in being a princess nor any sense of empowerment or recognition of being a multi-dimensional person. The modern fairy tale is a 1950s June and Ward Cleaver fantasy where traditional gender roles enforce the idea that women are delicate beings on top of the pedestal of domesticity. Meghan Trainor’s “Dear Future Husband” is exemplary of this with 1950s nostalgia on full blast while Trainor sings “You gotta know how to treat me like a lady/Even when I’m acting crazy/Tell me everything’s alright.”
There is no harm in cutesy pet names, but there is a problem when that name becomes the model of gender roles in a relationship. Instead of royalty, why not endeavor to be treated like a high-ranking cabinet member or commander-in-chief or even an attractive self-actualized human being? I’d prefer to be treated like that any day over a princess.