Down with Princesses!

 

Down with them! Down! I really dislike the Vera Wang Princess ads. The girls portrayed in them remind me of the kind of overprivileged young women who populate the undergraduate population of my university. I always groan when I see this kind of girl in my classes on the first days of the semester; you can spot them from a mile away—always attached to their blackberrys, hoisting a huge be-logoed Prada bag on their anorexic shoulders, wearing a hideous and rather skanky outfit that you can tell is designer right away.

This is the kind of girl who shows up in my office crying if she gets

less than an A on the paper she plagiarized from the internet, who gets drunk and pukes at frat parties, who never worries about the future because she knows she can always work for Daddy’s firm. She never studies anything because it interests her;  she only studies subjects she needs to know to make lots of money. And worst of all, she speaks in a simpering baby whine that makes my ears curl.

It disturbs me that looking like a bratty, overprivileged child makes effective ad copy these days. Whatever happened to the mysterious glamour of yesteryear, anyway? Born to rule, indeed, and isn’t it unfortunate! The worst part of all is that people really seem to feel princesslike when they put this fragrance on, as these Basenotes reviews suggest, and don’t realize that the candy-sweet sugar confection this is cannot be a good reflection of their inner depths or their capacity to rule. Honestly, when I think princess, I want to think Grace Kelly,  not Little Miss Fancy New Jersey Pants here.

I know this sounds pretty snarky, and I apologize for that. Plus, I know this ad campaign has been out for a long time—it’s just been grating on my nerves ever since. Any readers out there who Love Vera Wang Princess’ aesthetic and want to defend it publicly? I’d love to hear it.