Margaret Emma Brandl
The Princess Dress
As a little girl, my favorite thing to dress up as is a “fairy princess.” Not just a princess—I want to have magical powers. I wear a silver-sequined crown, carry a matching wand.
Growing up, I go through a series of princess dresses. There is the pink one with all the mixed materials, the different pink fabrics (some see-through sparkly lace, some regular pink, all rather plastic-y—it was a store-bought costume). I don’t remember it so much as I see myself in it in pictures. There is the collection of all my mother’s bridesmaid dresses from her siblings’ weddings. None of them are particularly princess-y, but they feel grown-up, which is nearly the same thing. There is a floaty chiffon dress, pink and blue, that I borrow from a girl whose dad works with my dad. She is older than me and owns the dress, so she is one of my idols; I only have the dress briefly, but I don’t want to take it off. There is a silky nightie set that my mother finds and that I wear as pajamas almost obsessively, loving how fancy it is—a pink nightgown with spaghetti straps and a blue-turquoise robe embellished with a little bit of cream-colored lace. Once I bring the set to a sleepover in fifth grade and realize I’ve made a mistake; no one else plays dress-up in a nightgown—suddenly, the lace is a little embarrassing. And then there is every dress at my grandmother’s house. Most Saturdays we spend there I am raiding the closets, looking for all the strange and wonderful things my mother and her sisters wore when they were younger. I ask my mother to take pictures. I parade around in a fashion show, moving from one outfit to the next.
As I get older I stop playing dress-up so much, stop trying on all these princess dresses, but then the marching band goes to D.C. and we have our own inaugural ball and suddenly I’m seeing that the dresses I always dreamed of do get worn, and they exist for dances like Homecoming and Prom. I don’t have school spirit so much as I have band spirit or Latin club spirit, but it finally occurs to me that I want to go to those dances. I want to wear princess dresses again.
**
At the end of elementary school, I become obsessed with Sailor Moon. I am the only person in my grade who is this invested in an anime; not only do my classmates have other interests, but most of them are being told by their churches that anime is from the devil. Still, I devour the story—a girl with magical powers discovers that she has to save the world and find the Moon Princess, as well as the princess’s other magical guardians—the Sailor Scouts. Unsurprisingly, Sailor Moon herself turns out to be the Moon Princess, reborn into this new life to stop the evil that destroyed the Moon Kingdom long ago. Being the Moon Princess comes with a destined, forbidden romance with the Prince of Earth—who of course has also been reborn. The story goes on, diverges, complicates itself with time travel; but really what I get at the start is all I need. Sailor Moon is a princess with magical powers, the fulfillment of the character I always pretended to be.
In one chapter of the Sailor Moon manga, Sailor Moon uses a transformation pen to disguise herself for a classy ball. Her dress is off-the-shoulder, long, and flowing; and it is in this beautiful dress that she finds herself dancing with and then saving a mysterious, handsome stranger. Of course he is the reincarnated Prince of Earth; of course he is also the annoying, bad-tempered guy she keeps literally running into in real life. The dress is a turning point, the ball a revelation: by the time she goes home, they both know each other’s true identities and feel the unmistakable pull of attraction between them. This, perhaps, is the dream of a princess dress: a garment that transforms you into someone people love, someone people want to know.
**
One afternoon on the walk from math class to the band room, the most magical thing happens: the boy I have a serious crush on asks me to go with him to Prom. We are juniors and this is my first opportunity at Prom and he is my crush and I say yes, of course, because suddenly all my dreams are going to come true. I’ve been planning for this for the past two years, imagining it on and off, the one thing that will finally put us on the path to being boyfriend and girlfriend. I rush to tell one of my best friends, find her in the lobby outside the band director’s office and quickly learn that she already had a date when my crush had asked her earlier. I’m not his first choice; but that doesn’t fit the story I’ve been telling myself, so I file that away into a mental box labeled “ignore” and call my mother from the parking lot. Within days she is taking me after school to start shopping for prom dresses, and I’m back in a fairyland of my own creation.
We spend a lot of time at Anitra’s, a store that I know all the girls use for prom. It’s local. Their dresses are more fabulous, more varied and in more colors and sometimes up to twice the volume of the dresses at Dillard’s. I try on dress after dress but nothing seems to be perfect—besides, I have sticker shock. I am aghast at the idea that other girls spend $200 on their dresses—$300, $400, $500, even up to $800. We keep looking: we both know JCPenney is no good for dresses like this, and Dillard’s doesn’t have anything cheap enough for me that catches my eye. In Dillard’s, too, a sales associate starts following me around and talking to me. I am awkward and don’t trust anyone who wants to sell me something; I try to ignore her; tell her I’m doing fine and don’t need her help. With me shutting her down, she goes to my mother and starts pulling dresses. “What about this?” she asks.
“Oh, she won’t like that,” my mother answers.
“Well, I’ll ask her.” As if the sales associate thinks that my mother is an old fuddy-duddy and I’m going to love what she thinks is in. I remember the dress she holds up to me is cut straight; it doesn’t have what my best friend Annabeth calls the “cupcake skirt,” which is what we all want and need for prom in my Louisiana town: the poofier, the better. Though I’m a slim size eight, I’m already convinced my hips are too big, that I’m too fat, and that a dress that doesn’t cinch at the waist and then flare out isn’t going to work for me. I scrunch my nose in distaste at the dress as I tell the associate no. I’m not like everyone else, I want to tell her. I have taste.
We try bridal stores next; our third stop has a strange selection of prom-like dresses, but my mother or the associate randomly picks one dress from a sale rack that I am sure isn’t going to work. It’s got a tight bodice and a poofy skirt with pickups, like Belle’s yellow dress in Beauty and the Beast, but the color of the skirt is a weird beige-y pink that shifts in the light. Plus it’s expensive.
The sales associates are pushy, insisting on finding me a dress when I want to say, not at THIS price! I am sure that this store is a bust like all the rest, though I spend some time in a neon green dress (which is prettier than it sounds) and the dress with pick-ups. The weird pink dress has a corset back and a white tulle bodice with lace and crystals. Under the pick-ups is a layer of white fabric and more tulle. It is technically a wedding dress, but a nontraditional one—probably too nontraditional for our hometown. Still, it is a floor sample, and they want to get rid of it. My mother and I leave empty-handed, but we keep thinking back to the pink dress with pick-ups. “It really was perfect,” my mother tells me, trying to tamp down my guilt over owning something that costs that much. It’s my dream dance, I tell myself. It’s the dance that the guy I’m in love with is taking me to. Doesn’t that deserve a $300 dress?
My mother buys it. “It better be her wedding dress,” my father quips when he sees the price tag.
**
After Sailor Moon there is a wide world of manga and anime, and I plunge in, especially the girls’ genre, shōjo. The Waldenbooks in the mall is my source for manga—first just a few shelves next to the register, then a section by the magazines, until I am in high school and the manga section is not just one side of a bookcase but two tall cases, shelves upon shelves upon shelves. I give up $10 of my spending money at a time per volume of whatever I think sounds good: romance, friendship, magical transformations.
I search for anime on the internet and discover so many personal pages, hosted on Angelfire or Geocities, all connected via the Anime Web Turnpike. I discover fanfiction, or rather that that’s the word for it, having already started writing my own tentative stories in my favorite anime universes, so short they barely span half a page. I style the title of each story using Microsoft Word’s “Word Art” feature, the names bold and diagonal across half the page or curved upward like a gentle hill. In later documents, I change the font and text color for each story, sometimes to the point that looking at the words I’m typing makes my eyes hurt. I keep them in long composite documents, collections of stories all from one series, and only ever tell a few friends from Girl Scouts what I’m doing. My mother asks what I’m writing on the computer all the time, and my answers are vague, noncommittal. My parents expect me to write the next Great American Novel. I can’t imagine telling either of them that I’m just writing love stories about anime. How embarrassing.
Even worse, it’s basically the same love story, over and over—I devour the tropes I learn from the internet, the little turns the stories might take to bring two characters together. Hurt/comfort is one I use a lot, an easy write—one character experiences some loss, some heartbreak or physical pain or sickness, and the other character is there for them, tender and loving, until the climax of the confession.
The confession is another beloved trope I see in anime and manga, the source of at least half of most main characters’ problems, to the point that the buildup to it can comprise an entire series. So many stories are built on the premise that at least one person has feelings for another but can’t bring themselves to say it out loud. There are a million variations in the reasons why this confession takes so long; but the agony of waiting, of the reader knowing what the characters don’t, is something I return to, something I seek out, something I crave. As far as I see it, once the confession is over, so is the story—everything else is just filler. Though I later discover “literary” manga, stories that don’t fit into easily predictable boxes, I still long for the stories where everything works out the way I’ve expected it to. The characters confess their love to each other, finally, without barriers, and their future blossoms bright and shining before them.
**
My hair isn’t done for Prom like the other girls’, nor does it take all day for me to get ready. My friends make nail appointments to go with their hair appointments, come out with elaborate updos and reek of hairspray. Hairspray no longer makes me break out in hives (as it did when I was a baby), but still I want to be cautious; and I’m not interested in spending money at a hairdresser. My mother does my hair herself, so my updo is small and relatively simple.
I forget whether my date picks me up at my house or if we meet him at his—his house is where we’re to take pictures, and all the parents gather and group us together. Annabeth is dating someone on the track team and we’re all going together, so it’s the four of us and a few other people I marginally know. We take pictures at the front of my date’s house and in his backyard where his family has a dock. There is a still lake behind the house that makes a nice background; I am shy to stand next to him, even though he’s my date.
Dinner is at Olive Garden. He drives from that point on, and we have a large table reserved together with all the track team couples. I remember to order something with alfredo sauce since I’m afraid of getting tomato sauce on my dress. All of us girls in our unwieldy dresses go to the bathroom together, if not in pairs but groups, so the track guys announce that now the guys have to go to the bathroom together, too. They think they are funny and my date looks uncomfortable, but he still goes along with them.
I don’t speak much at dinner, or really enjoy it: the track boys are weird. I already know this, but sitting through their loud and unfiltered conversations, I now know it exponentially. They make dirty jokes and I’m mortified to be associated with them, to be part of this large group making a scene in one of our hometown’s few nice restaurants.
On the drive from Olive Garden to the prom—which is held at my date’s old middle school, not our high school—I’m totally at a loss for things to say and start repeating gossip I’ve heard about our classmates. I know it’s in poor taste before I even open my mouth, but I do it anyway; anything to resolve the uncomfortable silence. My date—my crush—isn’t really speaking to me. What am I supposed to say? Shouldn’t he be coming to the realization that he loves me now that he’s seen me dressed like a princess? But the main event is still ahead. There will be plenty of time in our evening for him to confess his love, for me to confess it back.
His old middle school is identical to mine, except for the paint colors—the two schools were built at the same time using the same plans. I know where the bathroom is and the cafeteria and the gym. Inside the gym we scout out a table to sit at, off to the side of the dance floor. I don’t think either of us feels comfortable dancing. One of my crush’s more memorable remarks is actually the face he makes when a classmate greets us as she tries to adjust her substantial bust within her dress. Later, we gawk at mutual acquaintances dancing “dirty” out in the thick of it—the way they move their bodies is intimate, almost vulgar.
Prom is not for me what I know it is for some classmates—their parents rent them party buses, purchase alcohol for them to consume at home (as the rumor goes, it’s legal that way). Some of my classmates, I realize belatedly, have sex—something I can’t fathom doing. It’s too risky (you could get pregnant, and my church doesn’t believe in condoms); I’m too insecure about my body (I think I’m fat, so I don’t want anyone seeing me naked); and I’ve never envisioned myself as anything other than a good Catholic girl (no sex before marriage) or my classmates as anything other than obedient, practicing Protestants (equally opposed to premarital sex). Sometimes I watch VH1 or MTV in my bedroom, so I know just a few things that our middle-school abstinence-based sex education left out; but I am, if nothing else, someone who follows the rules.
All the stories I write in my head about myself and my date are about the moment of a love confession, my long-awaited first kiss, and the “couple things” our friends do—resting my head on his shoulder on the band bus, always having someone to save a spot at the lunch table or anywhere else, exchanging quiet banter not unlike we do already. I am the “mom friend,” the one who takes care of everyone else to the point of patronizing them: I carry Advil in my purse, I remind them to eat regularly, I scold my date when he does something stupid like cut himself on a Coke can as he crushes it between his hands. I’m almost embarrassed to see people I know dancing like that, their bodies so close; I can’t even imagine wanting that.
My date and I slow-dance a few times, awkwardly at best. We spend a lot of time at the tables at the edge of the room. The floor is covered in black garbage bags, to protect it, and the detail fits. Finally they announce that the cafeteria is open for games, and we are relieved to escape the dancing part. We play carnival games for tickets and prizes, trying to win something exciting; I put all my tickets into the raffle for senior portraits. Everyone at our school seems to get them done, but I know they’re expensive, an indulgence my parents went without at my age and don’t quite understand me wanting. At the end of the night, my date wins the portraits, and I air my frustration that he could already get them for free: his cousin is a photographer.
There is a party at another girl’s house after—not someone from track, but someone from band, one of our closer friends. We drive up and down her street and I tease him for being lost, then call her and say it again—we’re lost. He is annoyed and I am flirting; I think I’m being funny. I know guys hate to admit they’re lost. We learn we’ve passed the house and return to it; the driveway is steep.
Inside, I change out of the princess dress. It feels silly to be wearing a T-shirt and shorts while still in my full makeup with my hair done. Our host’s mother feeds us all kinds of snacks; we eat and laugh goof off—a group of us—until it’s time to watch a movie. I think it is a horror movie. I want to sit by my date but he has stretched out longways on a different couch and I feel awkward being so obvious about it. I hope that he will get up from the couch and change his mind, that he will realize that his time could be better spent cuddling me, but instead he falls asleep. I fall asleep, too, almost instantly.
In the middle of the night I wake up. The movie is over and my date is asleep, but I want to go sleep in my own bed, so I wake him up. He tells me good morning several times in rapid succession and I giggle like mad, prodding him to take me home.
It’s super dark in my neighborhood—we don’t have street lights like in the neighborhood we’ve just come from—and my parents haven’t left the porch light on. Seeing my house in the dark makes me want to sing, knowing we won’t have a parent or sibling or random person interrupting us when he walks me to the door. It’s a movie romance trope I’m now counting on, one I thought of all the way home—the kiss good night. He won’t be able to help himself, I think. I’m so beautiful tonight, was so beautiful in my dress. I wonder what he will say; I’ve speculated about it for weeks, ever since he asked me to go with him. But he doesn’t even open the car door for me. He follows me down the sidewalk. He gives me one of the two favor bags we were given at the prom, hugs me on the front porch, and walks away.
**
I am used to arriving home late at night into the morning; I’m in marching band. I’m full of that particular exhaustion that gives me the ability to brush my teeth lightning-fast, and in spite of the fact that I will get hairspray all over my pillow I fall almost instantly asleep.
The next day I have an obligation to play timpani for the youth orchestra. I sit backstage with my notebook, feeling rumpled and not awake, writing about the evening prior. After all the time I’d spent building it up, it had turned out to be—pretty awkward. And now what? Nothing had changed between us. My date hadn’t professed his love for me. He hadn’t showered me with compliments, hadn’t told me how much fun he’d had spending the evening with me, hadn’t asked me out for real. He hadn’t kissed me at all, not even on the cheek.
Maybe, I tell myself, it’s one of those setbacks. Maybe the shōjo manga of my epic love story is a couple more books long before its heartfelt conclusion. I discover that the favor bag he’s given me contains the voucher for senior portraits, and that’s by design—realizing how much I wanted them, he decided to give them to me. And that’s all it takes to rekindle my hope, imagining that he’s gifted them out of secret love. I don’t think, maybe he’s not the lovestruck hero I imagine he is. I don’t think, I’ve made him into a character in a story I’m inventing. I don’t think, life isn’t like a manga. Or, I do—just not until years later.
Over the summer, a mutual friend predicts “us couples” going together to Homecoming—she is part of a couple and takes prom as proof that I am, too, even though my prom date and I aren’t going out yet. He and I both travel internationally that summer and bring each other souvenirs: I bring him action figures of Roman gladiators (I forget why); he brings me Austrian chocolates with marzipan and pistachio inside. But by the first week of band camp, I discover that he is dating another girl from band, the girl who had been his first choice for Prom.
He calls me the day I find out, telling me something along the lines that I’m a nice girl and all, but—who remembers the rest. I throw myself into the literature assigned in English class, into longing and hope—The Great Gatsby, Spoon River Anthology, Pride and Prejudice. He doesn’t ask me to Prom again, even though he and his girlfriend break up by Halloween; instead, he asks a girl from choir. My schedule of other classes had prevented me from getting to take choir, and I am bitter, certain that if I’d been in that class, he would have chosen me.
A platonic friend I’d once had a crush on takes me to senior prom. It is the nature of school dances to wear a dress only once; so this time I wear a blue dress, a dress I bought myself on clearance at the mall for no real reason months prior and that I call “the pirate dress” on account of its high-low skirt and corseted bodice. My mother buys me a puffy white petticoat to wear underneath, giving my pirate dress the requisite “cupcake” proportions. To make my crush jealous, to make him realize his mistake, I spend Prom dancing as often and silly as possible, giving the appearance of having the most fun with my new date and our friends and Annabeth. As an unexpected side effect, I enjoy it, much more than the year before.
Through the end of school, graduation, the summer that follows, I hold onto hope that the feelings my crush knows I have for him will convince him to like me back. Unsurprisingly, they don’t. The part of me that decided to memorize the last sentence of The Great Gatsby recognizes, deep down inside, that this isn’t Sailor Moon; and my perfect pink princess dress, crammed into a garment bag, is relegated to the back of my closet.
Margaret Emma Brandl's novella Tuscaloosa (Or, In April, Harpies) was published by Bridge Eight Press in 2021. Her fiction, creative nonfiction, and video essays have appeared in magazines such as Gulf Coast, Yalobusha Review, River Teeth, and Moon City Review. She teaches creative writing and other English courses at Austin College in Sherman, TX.