VELVETEEN PRESENTS THE PRINCESS vs. Public Relations #3
“Mr. Miller, can you please explain to our readers how it is that you feel comfortable taking up the role of ‘fairy tale princess’ when you’re biologically more suited to the role of fairy tale prince?
Do you feel as if lying to the children of the world is justified by the bottom line of the corporation you work for?
Have they forced you into this role against your will?
” The reporter leaned forward, expression suddenly predatory.
He thought he had found a weak spot, and he was going in for the kill.
“My readers are very interested in your answer.”
“Not that interested, if they couldn’t be bothered to look up every other interview that’s ever asked me the same question,” said the Princess coolly.
There had been a time, when she was still young and terrified of having her new life taken away, when she had tried to forget where she’d come from.
The corporation had been happy to let her hide.
They liked their new superheroine uncomplicated and uncontroversial, and since no one who’d been there for her coronation had spoken out against her, they were going to keep their mouths shut for as long as they could.
But time had moved on, one day at a time.
Carrabelle had grown older, and eventually grown up, and realized that her silence wasn’t helping anyone—not even herself.
There were little girls out there who were just like she’d been, trapped in the wrong bodies and trying to convince their parents that they knew themselves all the way down to the bone.
There were little boys being forced into parts they’d never asked to play, raging at the center of their shells of false femininity.
She was supposed to be the princess of all the children in the world, not just the ones who’d been lucky enough to be born with an outside that already matched their inside.
“If you’d done your research before you came in here looking for some juicy gossip, you’d have found the interview I gave on my eighteenth birthday, the one where I brought pictures of myself from before I convinced my family to allow me to live as a girl,” said the Princess.
Her voice was tight, and the more observant reporters noted how many birds had appeared, roosting on the trees all around them.
If she lost control, Hitchcock was going to be proud.
“You’d have been able to read what I said then, which was, I think, about as well-thought out as any discussion of the topic is ever going to be.
I’ve never lied to anyone. I was born a girl.
I will die a girl. The fact that the hopes and dreams of the children of the world pointed to me and said ‘her, she’s the best princess we can find, she’ll take the best care of the story’ should tell you more than anything else that I have never deceived anyone.
It’s not my fault that the doctors put a label on me before I was old enough to choose one for myself. ”
“So you admit that you were born male,” said the reporter. He didn’t raise his hand this time; the pretense of civility was gone. The Princess was almost glad. If he wasn’t playing nicely, she didn’t have to do it either.
“I admit that I was assigned male at birth, by people who were not telepaths, who did not have the ability to look into my mind and heart and see that I was already a little girl. I was a girl when I took my first breath. I’ll be a girl when I take my last. You want to sit there, secure in the gender that they gave you when you were born, and judge me?
I am a princess. The story chose me, because it knew what I was, just like I knew.
And you know what? All those little girls who idolize me, all those little boys who ask me if I’ve got a prince out there, none of them care what the doctors said when I popped out of my mama.
They look at me and they see a woman. Children are the magic mirrors of the human race.
They see the truth when it’s in front of them.
” The Princess shook her head. “You can try to paint me whatever way you want, sir. If you’ve got a bigot’s brush to use, well, I suppose that’s your problem and not mine.
I think it’s time for you to go. The adults would like to have a press conference now. ”
She turned pointedly back to the other reporters.
Some of them had their hands up. Others were looking at the newcomer with expressions of mingled horror and pity on their faces, like they couldn’t believe he had come to the press conference without doing his research first. Many of them had discussed trans issues with the Princess, sometimes in this very forum.
She was always happy to talk. She just wasn’t happy about being accused of intentional falsehood, and most of them couldn’t blame her. No one liked to be called a liar.
“I will not be ignored,” snarled the new reporter, rising from his seat.
The Princess snapped her fingers. The large bear that had been waiting by the entrance, looking like nothing so much as a rustic armchair, pulled itself to its full height and lumbered toward the reporter.
“No, sweetie, you won’t,” said the Princess.
“Bruno’s not going to ignore you. He’s just going to show you the way out. ”
The bear reached for the reporter. The reporter pulled a pen from inside his jacket and blasted the bear across the courtyard with a deluge of red ink.
The rest of the reporters, who had been working the superhero beat long enough to recognize trouble when they saw it, began scrambling away.
Some of them even left their notebooks behind.
“You will not suppress this story!” shouted the reporter.
Red ink ran down his hand and arm, swirling and spreading until it covered his entire body in a thin film.
He lowered his arm. The film popped, revealing a black bodysuit with the letters FD on the chest in red. “The people will have Full Disclosure!”
The Princess stared at him. “Did you seriously just name drop at me?” she asked incredulously.
“Did you stand there, in my place, during my press conference, and drop your name like it was something I was going to want to pick up? Honey, that’s not just crass, that’s downright unprofessional.
Who taught you how to be a supervillain? Did they have credentials?”
“I ask the questions here!” shouted Full Disclosure. He turned his pen on her, shooting out a huge gout of red ink. For a moment, the Princess disappeared, wiped from view by the gory editorial curtain.
Silence fell across the courtyard, broken only by the sound of the birds ruffling their feathers in the trees.
It was a silence so profound that when the Princess snapped her fingers again, it sounded like a gunshot.
The red ink fell away, revealing her in her still-pristine dress the color of midnight and moonlight, covered in diamonds that glittered like stars in the night sky.
She looked at Full Disclosure pityingly.
“A princess never gets her best gown dirty,” she said.
He shrieked something about ethical journalism and blasted her again. This time, a curtain of glitter appeared in front of her, absorbing and deflecting the ink. The Princess started to look annoyed.
“I don’t think you quite understand what you’re doing,” she said.
“You’re attacking me on my turf, with thousands of children who believe in me so close that I can feel them.
You really think you’re going to get anywhere?
There are times and places when I’m vulnerable.
This isn’t one of them. Now pack your pen and get out, before I have to do something unladylike. ”
“I am not one of your lapdogs, here to be misled with facts!” shouted Full Disclosure. He turned his pen on her for the third—and, as it happened, final—time. The glitter absorbed the ink again, and when the deluge stopped, the Princess sighed.
“I really wish you hadn’t done that,” she said.
She clapped her hands once, twice, three times, and the birds that had been roosting so peacefully in the trees took to the wing.
Some of them were sweet little things, bluebirds and sparrows and starlings, as befitted the living incarnation of the dreams of children everywhere.
Far more were hawks and eagles and snowy owls, crows and ravens and turkey vultures, as befitted Carrabelle Miller, who wore her gowns proudly, but never forgot where she had come from, or who she was, or how hard she was willing to fight to stay exactly where she was.
The birds descended on the screaming supervillain, who blasted them with gouts of ink, and swatted at them with his frantically flailing hands, and did everything within his power to hold their talons at bay.
In the end, he even turned to run. It was far too late by then, of course; he had been lost the moment he chose to turn his red pen on the Princess after she had asked him nicely to stop.
The other reporters watched silently as the birds carried him, kicking and screaming, off into the blue storybook sky. Finally, one of them raised his hand.
“Yes?” said the Princess. “You can all come back to your seats now, by the way. Unless one of you is also a supervillain in disguise, I think the major excitement’s over for the day.”
The reporters returned to their seats. The one who had raised her hand asked, “Where are the birds taking him?”