The Princess Who Saved Herself

Back around May I backed Jonathan Coulton and Greg Pak’s kickstarter Code Monkey Save World. The ONLY reason I backed it is because of this stretch goal to have Takeshi Miyazawa draw a children’s book based on Jonathan Coulton’s song, The Princess Who Saved Herself.

if you don’t see a “play” button below, click just left of the left-most number and the song should play

As you know if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, I’ve been mulling over the whole Disney Princess thing ever since Scarlett turned 1. See posts here, here, and here. So I was elated to discover JoCo’s song about a princess who doesn’t just wait around for  a prince to save her. In fact, the bridge section with her and the Prince on the phone is pretty great. It looks like Coulton was going through some of the same emotions I was when he wrote this song:

For Coulton, the reason for the song (and the potential book version) are a little more personal. “My daughter went through a princess phase, like most girls, and it was a little terrifying to watch her biological programming get hijacked by this manipulative industry that made tiny-waisted dolls based on outdated female role models,” said Coulton.

“Little girls are pretty kick-ass, and for anyone who has spent some serious time watching them figure out the world, assigning them to some passive role brushing their hair in a high tower will seem a little ridiculous. This song was an attempt to describe and enable that kind of kickassitude, and so putting it into kids book form is another one of those no-brainer ideas. - from this Wired article.

I was extra happy to find out that Scarlett loves the song. It’s one of about three songs that, around 14-16 months of age she would automatically dance to if she heard it. She also smiled whenever it was on. Since Scarlett loves to be read to so much, I can’t wait until they release this as part of the Kickstarter.

If you couldn’t understand all the lyrics or couldn’t (or didn’t want to) listen above, here are the lyrics.

• Jonathan-Coulton
• Kickstarter