She was a "mediawhore" for Adelaide Fringe, and now for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Isabella Valette will be a Princess, with a twist of course. Directed by Fiona Scott-Norman, Princesstuous explores a common theme running throughout the villains of fairy-tales. Snow White had one, The Little Mermaid had one and Cinderella had one too; an older, angry woman trying to hold her down."A friend and I were talking about the Disney films we’d grown up on and identified a theme of older women as arch-villains, who were always jealous of the young, beautiful princesses," explains Valette. "That got us thinking about competition among women, the female fear of ageing, Nietzsche's philosophy on slave culture and the kind of qualities that are highlighted around princess culture as being a positive. A lot of the villains were powerful, talented women who were victims of their beauty/youth-obsessed worlds. I have also been inspired by the essay ‘Royal Bodies’, looking at the ‘princess effect’ in real life, and our relationship to royal women.”
While there is still a long way until the representation of women and their relationships with other women begin to be honestly explored, Valette feels progress is being made. "I think a lot of modern Disney and Pixar films, like most other Hollywood blockbuster films, are becoming far more aware of trying to create stronger female characters. Frozen is the obvious example, so is Mad Max and Star Wars," she says. "It would still be nice to have anti-heroes, flawed women, not overtly masculine or feminine protagonists. I think sometimes we are so en-cultured to seeing female characters as being either good or evil, and not so much grey territory. I also liked that in Mad Max, Charlize Theron’s character challenged the preconception of having to be beautiful and sexy. She had her own thing going on and she wasn’t dressed to the tits in tight spandex or a princess dress."
