The new Cinderella films just teach girls they must be pretty to be loved, writes Cherry Potter
Cinderella, the most popular princess of all time, is making a comeback. This year we are seeing a steady stream of Cinderella "princess movies": The Prince & Me, A Cinderella Story, The Princess Diaries 2 and Ella Enchanted, which will be released in time for Christmas.
The reason is simple. According to the market research, if you tot up the annual pocket money of American "tweens" (eight- to 14-year-olds) it's about $85 billion (€69.24 billion) and rising.
Apart from movies and DVDs, Disney is introducing 69 new princess books. Disney Princess magazine sells 10 million copies annually in 42 countries, and last year its princess-themed product sales hit $1.3 billion.
For the past 30 years feminists have been trying to kill off Cinderella. She makes a terrible role model.
Instead of asserting herself by standing up to her wicked stepmother and her spiteful sisters and getting a life, Cinderella is a miserable stay-at-home waiting passively for a fairy godmother to transform her, and for Prince Charming finally to resolve all her problems.
But despite feminist Colette Dowling's controversial theory in The Cinderella Complex, that the story reveals women's deep-seated hidden fear of independence, Cinderella has tenaciously refused to die. Instead, the story has been whittled down and Cinderella herself has undergone numerous makeovers to keep her appeal alive for each new generation.
The basic formula can be clearly seen in two recent Cinderella rom coms. In Maid in Manhattan, Cinderella is a good, kind, hardworking but spunky chambermaid, and in Two Weeks' Notice she's (you've guessed it) a good, kind etcetera lawyer.
In both films she's poor (at least in Hollywood terms), and Prince Charming is so wealthy that he doesn't really notice her as a contender to be his future bride until the obligatory ball when she appears transformed in a stunning evening dress and diamonds.
She runs away from the ball - another essential requirement - because she feels like she's posing and anyway it would never do if we suspected her of being a fortune-hunter.
Her prince runs after her, makes a few concessions to the modern woman's need for a career (the chambermaid can still become a chambermaid manager and the lawyer can continue to do good works) and the rest is wealth and glamour ever after.
The Prince & Me, The Princess Diaries and Ella Enchanted follow the basic formula, but in these films Prince Charming is a real royal prince.
In The Prince & Me a fictional prince of Denmark spots his Cinderella (whom he met while a college student in America) in the cheering crowd, lifts her on to his horse and rides with her to the palace.
Despite the tragedy of Princess Diana, Hollywood is banking on tweens fantasising about being spotted by the world's two most eligible bachelor princes, William and Harry. Traditional fairy tales contain a deep inner meaning for children. The original Cinderella addresses children's most secret frustrations and resentments.
The child longs to be special in the eyes of her neglectful father and is convinced that if it weren't for her wicked stepmother (she can't be her real mother or she would be good) and her cruel selfish siblings her father would love her and her alone.
Her fantasy resolution to this impossible conflict is to be magically transported out of this hateful family by a handsome prince whose sole purpose in the story (which is why he remains a shadow character) is to replace her father and recognise her as special.
However much feminists dislike this story, its archetypal significance, at least to children, cannot be denied.
The problem with the recent so-called Cinderella stories - apart from the fact that the wicked stepmother and cruel ugly sisters have either been demoted or wiped from the story completely - is that they have been denuded of meaning and context.
All the other rite-of-passage fairy tales, where heroes and heroines face all sorts of tests of character to enable them to learn and change, have been dumped. Instead, the modern fairy tale is exclusively about becoming the most beautiful princess in the land.
When I was a child we loved dressing up, as pirates, bandits, bag ladies, even on occasion princesses. The fun was that, irrespective of our gender, we could be anything we liked.
But now, with Disney's princess marketing targeting girls as young as three with Ultimate Princess kits, Very Important Princess T-shirts, and fantasy makeover Princess Parties overseen by doting parents, a whole generation of little girls is learning that they have to be the prettiest princess in order to be valued and loved.
No wonder their favourite story is Cinderella.
What's really worrying is what these little girls will be like when they grow up. How will they resolve the impossible conflict between being good, kind, hardworking cinder-cleaners, and clawing their way to the top of the beauty pedestal?
I suspect we are breeding, not a generation of Cinderellas, but spiteful "ugly" sisters.
Cherry Potter is the author of Screen Language and I Love You But . . . Seven Decades of Romantic Comedy