Princesses don’t wear glasses

That phrase pops up pretty often in the facebook group: it’s a common complaint heard by parent from kids using it as a reason to not wear their glasses. There was a recent blog post by a mother who was asking Disney to add a princess in glasses (here, and reprised here), and there’s even a petition  and a Facebook page created towards that cause. I understand where that complaint comes from: kids love to put themselves in stories and see themselves as the hero of a tale.

I want to offer this post as a rebuttal against that claim that princesses don’t wear glasses.

The links and products below are things I’ve found, or things brought to my attention by the many members of the facebook group.  No company asked me to post them here, though I get a small commission from books purchased through Amazon links.  A huge thank you and shout out to the facebook group for the fantastic photos, too!

Books

We’re going to start out with the books about princesses in glasses:

“Princesses Wear Glasses” (review ) is by Kristin Ellsworth and written because her daughter didn’t want to wear her glasses because “princesses don’t wear glasses.” You can even get the book customized with your child’s name and coloring. Princess Annie is brave and adventurous and goes off to find a dragon.

“Princess Peepers” and “Princess Peepers Picks a Pet” by Pam Calvert and Tuesday Mourning (review). There’s two books in this series. Princess Peepers wants to fit in with the other princesses and doesn’t want to wear her glasses in the first book but pretty quickly realizes why she needs them. The second book is my favorite, where she goes looking for the perfect pet, but when she loses her glasses, the pet she finds is a bit of a surprise.

“The Princess Who Wore Glasses” (review) by Lauren Hertzfeld Katz is about Princess Liana.  She’s a princess who loves nature and exploring.  But when her parents realize that she can’t see the birds in the trees, they call in their court wizard.  He conjures up magic glasses to give her better vision.

“Princess Palooza” is not really about a princess who wears glasses.  It’s a fun picture book about lots of girls dressing up as many different kinds of princesses and going off to play at the playground. One of the girls is wearing glasses.

TV

I have not seen the TV show “Sofia the First”, but apparently, there is a princess who is a student at Royal Prep Princess Zooey who wears glasses.  She is described as “kind, honest, funny, and nice.”  She appears in the episodes “Scrambled Pets” and “Princess Adventure Club.”  Here’s hoping she shows up in more episodes in the future, too!

Hipster princesses

Funco and Hot Topic recently teamed up to make a series of super cute figurines that feature Ariel, Jasmine, and Belle wearing glasses.  And there’s talk that Cinderella might join them as well.  This article talks more about them and the memes that led to their creations, but no matter what’s behind them, I think they’re adorable!  The princess figurines can be found at Hot Topic or online (sometimes they’re listed as “hipster”, sometimes as “nerd”).

T-shirts

Eye Power Kids Wear has a great t-shirt of a princess in glasses calling out, “to the rescue!”  She’s based on the character in Ellsworth’s book “Princesses Wear Glasses.”

Real life princesses

I went looking for pictures of modern princesses who wear glasses, and didn’t find very many, but then I ran across this article about Lady Louise, the 11 year old granddaughter of the Queen of England.  Lady Louis had strabismus in her early childhood, and while her vision is now good and she doesn’t wear glasses, that experience led her mother, the Countess of Essex, to become a patron of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness and a global ambassador for Vision 2020, an initiative aiming to eliminate avoidable blindness over the next five years.

Princess – hero

Speaking of royalty helping others, I had to share this photo of Rebecca, who recently cut her hair to raise money for childhood cancer research (as of this blog post, she was still accepting donations)!  A real-life superhero princess!

Princesses in glasses photo gallery

If what you’re looking for is more pictures of princesses in glasses, well I’ve got those, too!  (If you have a photo of a princess in glasses that you’d like to add to this gallery, please send it to ann@shinypebble.com).  Click on a photo to see a larger version.