Views From Mount Dunbar: Princess Emi

From a cat to a princess: my grandniece Emi was already wearing cat-whisker markings from her daycare when we brought over her gift for her third birthday. She was happy to add a princess persona to the earlier one. Photo by John.

My sisters and I had no access to TV or movies, let alone iPads, when we were children, so it was probably from books that we learned about princesses and their tiaras. Out of the dress-up box would come the sheer white blouse with “diamonds” embedded in the front that commonly topped off our best princess looks, combined with crinolines or whatever else we could find that was fluffy or filmy.

The piece de resistance was always a tiara conjured out of cardboard and covered with tinfoil to give it the required glitter. A length of a fur-like substance, placed at the base of the tinfoil creation, served as the ermine we had seen in photographs of Queen Elizabeth’s crown.

It’s been more than 50 years, but princesses are back in my life again, thanks to my grandniece Emi, who is fascinated by Elsa, the ice princess from the 2013 Disney animated film Frozen. Emi’s third birthday was last week, so when it came to a gift, even her mom (who tries to avoid cartoon-related clothing) agreed a Frozen-related something would be appropriate.

Which is how I ended up setting foot in my first-ever Disney store, today’s replacement for our old dress-up box. Choose your colour and your favourite Disney princess, and there’s a full-skirted tulle dress there for you, along with a gargantuan necklace and earrings, and yes – just the right matching tiara.

I stood firm against the full-skirted tulle, imagining how hard it would be to clean and maintain, and went for an Elsa-themed hoodie, with a floaty little cape-like attachment on the back. But as the former official tiara-maker for the princess games of my youth, how could I resist a “real” piece of sparkling headgear?

Emi loved it.