Studying hard to be a Disney princess

As a child, I was a Disney aficionado. I was driven by passion, a keen interest that went beyond mere entertainment. It was the storylines, to be sure, and the witty dialogue and fantastic settings. But more than anything it was the training. Disney movies, with their casts of beautiful heroines, taught me everything I needed to know about being a woman.

As I hovered at the shaky cusp of adolescence, my most important muse was Ariel of "The Little Mermaid." She was pretty — of course — with a touching naiveté and a knack for witty repartee. But what she really had, and I coveted above all else, was a voice. She could belt out those Disney ballads with the best of them, a legacy she'd earned from her porcelain-faced forebears, the Snow Whites and Sleeping Beauties of earlier generations. Me? I'm a quick study, but no amount of training could put my voice on that mermaid's level. Not even in the vicinity. The saddest part was that I believed, in the magical thinking that allows children to endorse Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, that I had a great voice. This lasted as far as sixth grade chorus tryouts when I learned, to my everlasting chagrin, that I didn't have the pipes to be a Disney princess.

If I couldn't sing my way into a heroine role, I could at least master the other star qualities. So, I redoubled my efforts elsewhere. Kindness? Check. Innocence? Check. An ability to communicate with wild animals? Check. (Thankfully, I grew up in a household blessed with many cats — we topped out at 17 — so I was able to develop those woodlandcreature whisperer qualities early on). And don't even get me started on the hair.

If there's one characteristic every Disney girl has got going on, it's a flowing mane (and I've been working on mine for years). Sure, they come in all colors, but you won't see a single cartoon beauty with a close crop. In this month's Elle magazine, writer Johanna Cox talks about her experience going from long locks to a pixie cut and asks Bravo's "The Millionaire Matchmaker" Patti Stanger for her opinion. "Men want what they want in a woman because of what they learned when they were little boys," Ms. Stanger says.

"Think about it: Who did they grow up wanting to rescue? Cinderella and Rapunzel didn't have edgy bobs."

When a new love came into my life — the tall, hunky, hero type — I immediately cast him as the lead male in my Disney-like fantasy. Curious if our relationship was written in the stars or star-crossed, I ran a Google search on his astrological sign. It turned up the usual results, things like "He is generous in the matters of time and money" and "He will be very passionate in love." But the line that caught my attention — a piece of advice for lovers trying to hook this sign — gave me hope for this budding romance. "You must learn to behave like the heroine in novels and storybooks," it said. This, I thought, is what I've been training for my whole life.

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