Plot:
A socially awkward but very bright 15-year-old being raised by her single mom discovers that she is the princess of a small European country because of the recent death of her long-absent father, who, unknown to her, was the crown prince of Genovia. She must make a choice between continuing the like of a San Francisco teen or stepping ut to the throne. While Mia makes up her mind, she’s pressed into taking princess lessons from her grandmother.
Comment:
The Princess Dairy comes from American woman writer Meg Cabot’s series of novels.
As we can see, there is hardly a male character in the movie. First of all, Mia is the only daughter of Genovia prince. But at the beginning of the movie, the prince has passed away. There isn’t any other male character in the royal family, so Mia is the only successor. Secondly, Mia’s mother is a single mother, she is dating Mia’s teacher, but Mia doesn’t like him. Also, Mia’s grandmother was the Empress Dowager of the country, she has supreme power. Besides, all of Mia’s friends are girls. Although it is an imaginary story, the character setting in Princess Dairy shows the author’s feminism inclination.
The movie focuses on the princess’s growth. At first, Mia was an ordinary girl in the school who often be ignored; she does not have the courage to express her feeling to the boy she loves. Instead, she writes her dreams in diary. When she realized she is a princess, she has to accept a new identity. This kind of growth is far more than love seeking stories in the past princess stories. However, there is still patriarchy scene in the film: when Mia gets her new hairstyle, her friend Lily was not satisfied with it, but her brother does. It implies this hair style is from male aesthetic, and Mia keeps this straight hair until the end of the movie.