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Bourree Lam talks to the queen of princess culture

There is one particularly popular export from America that the whole world can relate to without ever having set foot there: the American high school experience. The States’ tween and teen pop cultures are familiar to everyone – from nerds to jocks, homecoming queens to prom, somehow, we know about them all.

A great example of this trend sprung from the literary mind of Meg Cabot, author of the Princess Diaries among a slew of other teen chick-lit titles. The tale of a girl whose royal identity remains hidden from her until her teenage years (shit happens) has since been turned into two Disney movies starring Anne Hathaway as the quirky and physically insecure princess.

Cabot’s voice is bubbly, all the way from Key West Florida, where she lives down the street from another pre-adult literary institution – Judy Blume. “It’s funny,” says Cabot of the phenomenon of teen culture. “I think so many American writers are reliving it through our fiction, constantly throwing it in the face of the world to show them how awful it actually is.”

Having once been in American high school herself, Cabot wasn’t a Heather, or a Mean Girl – in fact she was decked out in goth gear and apparently “hated everyone”. “My brother was the superstar athlete, I was the theatre girl,” she says of her high school days. “Then you realise that there are more important things than hating all the jocks, after [high school] your world gets bigger.”

Cabot’s Princess Diaries is a deadly combination of two highly marketable and already popular cultures: American high school and royalty. The catch with the Princess Diaries, and perhaps the reason for their success, is the way Cabot has modernised the genre. Once upon a time, classic Disney princesses were girls whose destiny was to find love and be saved by Prince Charming. End of story. Clearly, the genre needed updating.

“None of them did anything! It was only about the guy,” insists Cabot. “I mean, Snow White? She eats a poisoned apple and waits for a guy to rescue her!”

In contrast, Cabot’s princess, Mia, describes her royal position as hardly enviable. Stressing on the realities that make happily ever after ever more complicated, Cabot’s work is modern in the sense that her princesses might be girly, but they are equally passionate about career and purpose as they are about mushy romance.

“For all the girls who would want to have these things happen, she’s the one girl who doesn’t want it to happen to her,” explains Cabot. “That’s how the books work. It’d be boring otherwise. We don’t want the fantasy, because in reality we know it would suck! We want things on our own terms.”

Turning the fantasy on its head has yielded much success for Cabot, and perhaps it’s due to the credit she gives to her young readers. “Girls now realise that there is no happily ever after,” she says. “You have to sacrifice to get what you want.” Yet thousands of young girls around the world continue to live the princess dream via pink commercial products and accommodating adults.

The power trip of a little girl can be a scary thing, as Cabot knows: she has had to explain democracy to angry readers, who demanded that Princess Mia be given sole rule of her country. But Cabot claims that little girls, like anybody, just want to feel special. “I know a lot of girls who have gone through that phase and come out OK,” reassures Cabot. “They might register some of what’s going on, but seriously a lot of it is just fashion – the outfits and the tiaras.”

Let’s hope that’s the case. But between rose-tinted glasses and reality, is Meg Cabot still a romantic? “Oh my god, of course!” she gushes. “Guys are, too, but they just don’t talk about it as much. Tons of guys read my books. I know because they write to me.”

Meg Cabot will be in Hong Kong Sat 4 & Sun 5, see listings.