I skipped my RS activity last week. I could have gone. I was off work that night. And I am sure someone from the ward would have offered to give me a ride.

But I decided against going because I was worried that if I showed up, I’d be way underdressed. You see, I didn’t have a prom dress lying around, and my wedding dress is stored at a relative’s home in another state.

Oh, and I was supposed to come to the activity dressed as a princess.

Yes. My Relief Society (not my Primary, or the Young Women) just sponsored an activity based on our current theme, regarding self-worth. And the winning idea was to have, prepare yourself, an:

Eternal Princess Tea Party.

When I sat down in the RS room, I saw a paper pinned to the board up front with the activity’s title in big letters. I couldn’t read the details, but what I saw made me nervous. Does that really say “eternal princess”?! Maybe this is one of the days where the young women start with us, so they’re posting their announcements in here? Maybe it’s actually a brilliant satire about princess culture, and my ward sisters are all wicked geniuses?

But alas, no. It was just an activity for the Relief Society. I am afraid I couldn’t keep my eyes from widening as the details were announced. I usually sit in a discreet corner of the room, but I noticed a lady in the Presidency cast a worried glance my way.

Now, I’ve been in charge of planning events before, and I know how difficult it can be. You are bound, it is true, to offend someone, or leave out someone, or make some silly mistakes. The idea, on its premise, isn’t too far off from a lot of girls’ nights I planned with my friends in younger days – get dressed up, have some fancy food, and just chat!

But the activity arose out of the theme of self-worth.

Why, when trying to celebrate our self-worth, would grown women turn to princesses for inspiration?

I have problems with this for a few reasons:

A) A heckuva lot of women don’t identify as princesses. When the activity was announced during class, the woman sitting next to me muttered, “Oh, hEll no. Can I tell you how much I am not attending that?” [I’m pretty good at finding women in church that I can sit next to and whisper heretical things with during lessons.] I’m not sure how to identify a woman who might find princess-hood empowering, but I can name a whole bunch of women in my ward that definitely would NOT. Last I checked, the Relief Society was an organization for all the grown up women in the church.

B) Princesses, in our common discourse, are pretty much all about beauty, polite manners, and wealth. They are pretty and stylish. They are rich. They are generally the prize for men in some lusty competition or another. We spend hours talking about their dress and their makeup. They are the pinnacle of elegance and beauty. What does any of this have to do with our self-worth? If our self-worth is bound up in such shallow notions, we’ve got a lot of work to do.

C) Princesses imply royalty. Royalty implies a reign. A reign implies subordinates. Princesses, and other royalty, derive their strength from ruling over others. They are, by definition, a part of the tiny elite. The vast majority of women are not, in fact, princesses, and could not be, or the concept would cease to have any value.

If we cannot have self-worth without being superior to others, we have a very false self-worth indeed. We derive a lot more strength from unity than we do from hierarchy. By placing ourselves in the position of royalty, we necessarily define others as our inferiors. I’m not comfortable with making that mental step in order to feel warm fuzzies about how much God loves me.