~By Brenda

I didn’t do much imaginary play when I was young. Instead, I liked to ride my bike and watch cartoons like G.I. Joe and Transformers. But, that all changed when Princess Diana was married on live television. During a slumber party, my best friend Melanie and I woke up very early to watch Lady Diana marry Prince Charles. We could not believe how long the train on her wedding dress was! We were mesmerized.

After seeing a Royal Wedding, nothing was the same for Melanie and me. We wore capes and ate crumpets; we carried scepters and wore tiaras. On certain occasions it was necessary to humble ourselves and speak to the peasants (our siblings.) We fancied ourselves princesses.

What a paradigm shift! The day before I was just a regular girl who liked to ride her bike to buy ice cream cones at the local drug store, and the next day I was a princess. All I needed was a new perspective.

In the movie, A Little Princess, there is a very poignant scene that I found enlightening. Of course I’m always a day late and a dollar short, so when I went to search for the quote from the scene I noticed that other LDS authors had found the same scene meaningful. But I want to share it with you again, just in case it gives you a new perspective on who we women (and men) really are. The scene involves Miss Minchin, a frightful governess and Sarah Crewe, a recent orphan.

Miss Minchin: Don’t tell me you still fancy yourself a princess? Child, look around you! Or better yet, look in the mirror.

Sarah Crewe: I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren’t pretty, or smart, or young. They’re still princesses. All of us. Didn’t your father ever tell you that? Didn’t he?

We believe that all women are daughters of God. We believe that we are literal spirit children of a Heavenly Father who loves us and we love Him.

In an October 2004 General Conference talk entitled “The Women in Our Lives” a Prophet of God, Gordon B. Hinckley, taught the world about the sanctity of womanhood. He did so by recounting the creation of the world:

There came first the forming of heaven and earth, to be followed by the separation of the light from the darkness. The waters were removed from the land. Then came vegetation, followed by the animals. There followed the crowning creation of man. Genesis records that “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31).
But the process was not complete.
“For Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
“And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman” (Gen. 2:20–23).
And so Eve became God’s final creation, the grand summation of all of the marvelous work that had gone before. (emphasis added)

President Hinckley continued,

There are some men who, in a spirit of arrogance, think they are superior to women. They do not seem to realize that they would not exist but for the mother who gave them birth. When they assert their superiority they demean her. It has been said, “Man can not degrade woman without himself falling into degradation; he can not elevate her without at the same time elevating himself” (Alexander Walker, in Elbert Hubbard’s Scrap Book [1923], 204).

But my favorite quote from his talk comes next.

Every woman is a daughter of God. You cannot offend her without offending Him.

All women are daughters of God. We are not orphans clinging to childhood imaginations. We are daughters of a King who has not abandoned us. On down days, when everything is going wrong, I pray. I pray for the reassurance that God cares and knows of my suffering. Without exception, I have felt His love pour down into my soul. My situation may not improve, but my capacity to understand and endure does. Through these experiences I have gained a relationship with a loving Heavenly Father who, just like Sarah Crewe’s father in the movie quoted above, has told me that I am a princess. All girls are.