It all started because the main character of my new book is a thirteen-year-old princess. Eagerly, after writing up my initial description of her, I went image-hunting for my pinterest board. I was positive that there would be scads and scads of cool, tween-ish princesses all overt the place, and that I would be sifting through them for hours trying to find the ones that were just perfect.
I found this:
which wasn't terrible and is even kind of cute, but after that I hit a rough patch. Here's a sampling of some of the pictures I've been desperate enough to pin:
Cute, but she's not supposed to look five-years-old or have such a very large head...
My princess isn't from Russia. Or the arctic...
She doesn't have a bosom (or weird, ear-like hair thingies)...
And (in my head, at least) she's prettier than this (is it mean to say that about a drawing???) and isn't wearing a flower head-wreath that really doesn't match her outfit.
Now, I have found a few more images and some are better than others, but none of them are great. Why is this? How can there be so few images of tween princesses? This really stumped me for a while because it seemed like such a strange phenomenon. After all, there are a gazillion super-artsy, super-cool, amazing pictures of little girl princesses, and we all know what happens if you type 'princess' into the search bar (most of them are scantily clad, large-bosomed, sheild maidens). (Or they're Disney.)
And then I developed a theory. You see, girls older than nine and younger than fifteen are the only females on the planet who are too old and/or too cool to be princesses. At ten they've just grown out of that phase, and it's 'baby-ish', and they aren't willing to admit that they secretly want to get dressed up and photographed as a princess until they hit fifteen or so, when they're finally far enough from childhood to admit the truth again without jeopardizing their image.
Doesn't that make perfect sense?
And if it doesn't, then maybe you can come up with some better theory for explaining the age-gap in princess photography subjects - or find the elusive 'tween princesses' that I can't seem to locate. Believe me, I would greatly appreciate either. I kind of can't stand not having images for my characters - especially my main characters - and this is driving me crazy! And if any of you out there are photographers, would you please, please, please go take some really cool princess photos of girls between the ages of ten and fifteen? (In particular, I need a blonde thirteen-year-old [preferably with a pony] and a petite, dark-haired, fourteen-year-old who looks snobbish. That's not too much to ask, is it?) I'll be eternally grateful for any photos sent my way...
