All right, guys (and a bunch of you gals too, I know you’re out there). This one is for the Americans. The Americans that are calling other Americans “traitors” and pissing and whining about how Americans shouldn’t be celebrating this because their heir ancestors fought a hard war to free themselves from the tyranny of the British monarchy.
We’ve come a long way from 1776, baby.
For most American women (okay, and some American dudes), the wedding between Prince William & Kate was not about British monarchy or tyranny. It’s about the fairytale.
But the fact that American revolutionaries succeeded in liberating Americans from the monarchy makes the revelry in the current state of British royalty that much sweeter—it allows Americans to enjoy all the benefits of being English-speaking without worrying about how the royal family will impact their lives and tax dollars.
Should Americans care about the royal family? No. And on a daily basis, 99 percent of us don’t give them a thought unless they’re in the news. But that’s what’s so great about being an American: unlike the British and its territories, we can choose whether we want to or not.
None of us paid our hard-earned tax dollars to see William & Kate married. The British did. It’s like they’re parents of the couple and we’re just the wedding attendees who needed to show up. We didn’t even need to buy gifts if we didn’t want to. It’s awesome.
What a lot of guys fail to realize is that most girls grew up with the idea of one day becoming a princess. This is pretty basic stuff. We often refer to the future-but-as-yet-unknown “right man” as Prince Charming. Stories of princesses like Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White regaled us. Cinderella, a low commoner, gets to marry a prince in the end.
So no, it’s not about the monarchy; it’s all about the real-life fairytale. And despite the fact that Prince William is seriously balding, he’s still way more of a looker than his father ever was.
Girls my age (including me) dreamed of growing up to marry Prince William. (I’m several months older than him and so is his bride.) We’d have no problem relinquishing our Americanness to achieve our childhood dreams of marrying a prince!
Of course, if you want to get down to reality, we all know that being part of the royal family is not a fairytale nor is it easy: it’s hard work to effortlessly be graceful among all that pomp and circumstance. Politics (I mean that in the negative sense of the word) are involved. Most women would balk and drop like flies at the public scrutiny they’d have to constantly face. There’s a reason why William & Kate waited nearly a decade before tying the knot.
But on the royal wedding day, we put such thoughts aside.
This Journey Is My Own 