The study by Koontz et al.

(2017) examined how young women perceive media representations of princesses and how princess culture influences the building of their romantic relationships.
Romantic love, historically, a feminized love.
The impact of princess culture on young women's imagery on love and romance remains unknown, except theorists and researchers express concern that fairy tales may prompt girls to seek romantic relationships based on commodified goods and / or a prince charming to take care. of them.
Media representations play a fundamental role, as they have a distinct and measurable impact on the understanding of reality.
Balraj and Gopal (2013) found that individuals organize knowledge of the world around them by ordering and simplifying information received through the media, creating certain representations of reality having a significant influence on social cognition, understanding, anticipation and emotional control.
Popular literature and the media offer an explicit focus on princess culture, yet the predominant focus of academic research on messages that mirror the ethics and portrayal of ideal love has repercussions on Walt Disney films.
Some studies have found that Disney films describe happiness as attainable by finding a life partner, relationships as easily maintained through the image of love at first sight, and the power differences that favor men over women.
Based on the prevalence of these themes and reported expectations, young women can be greatly influenced by popular culture, so that idealized media representations of love could perpetuate complications between expectations and lived experiences.
While existing studies suggest that women may be influenced by these stereotypes, further research can shed light on conceptions of love in order to determine how young women relate definitions of love and romance to princess culture, including and / or surpassing those Disney-specific scripts.
The study by Koontz et al.
(2017) attempted to examine the ways in which young women perceive media representations of princesses and how this affects the construction of their romantic relationships.
Through theoretical sampling (Charmaz, 2006) the authors recruited university students enrolled in humanistic and scientific faculties to collect different perspectives of the phenomenon.
To further support the differences in the sample, the researchers focused on diversity, minorities and issues related to gender identity.
The student body was made up predominantly of Caucasian women (57%), with 10% African American and 21% Hispanic women.
The data were collected through a semi-structured interview, proposed to students already involved in a study on the definition of the concept of princess culture, in which questions were asked about what impact that type of culture had on their university life.
The questions focused on how the participants defined love and romance and how they could be related or compared.
The first question was always How would you define the culture of the princess?, Followed by questions pertinent to the definitions given by the participants regarding how they felt influenced by this culture during their growth, especially with respect to their interpersonal relationships.
The responses indicated the level of influence of the fairytale narrative with respect to their definition of love and what the media called it.
In responding, the participants referred to examples derived from books, films or TV series to support their ideas and place them in a more generic cultural context.
During the first part of the analysis, the researchers codified the terms that emerged during the focus groups related to love, romance, femininity and marriage (Berg, 2009).
Subsequently a line-by-line coding was done to identify the main themes inherent to love and romanticism (Charmaz, 2006).
Finally, the researchers compared the data collected with those obtained in the previous literature to make them sound (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser and Strauss, 1967).
From the research it emerged that despite starting from a logic of rational love, which implies a vision of sustainable love through the time and work of both partners (Illouz, 1991), the ways in which the participants interpreted the media representations of love and of the princess culture differed.
Specifically, the young women struggling with the interpretation of the princess' culture seemed to face a conflict between ideal love and rational love, which was being resolved by approaching the culture of the princess or, on the contrary, by distancing themselves from this romantic vision.
Most of the participants disagreed with the representations of romantic love proposed by the media, calling them superficial and capable of building unrealistic and extravagant expectations.
We prefer to explain love through the framework of everyday life, moving away from the ideal endings proposed by fairy tales perceived as outside the realm of rationalized love.
No relationship can be considered perfect, so the reality is that romantic relationships require work and daily commitment (Illouz, 1997).
This perspective differs from the romantic love scripts that women were exposed to in their youth and from which they broke away thanks to the common sense derived from lived experiences that did not support these idealized representations.
The process of moving away from stereotypes about romantic love involves the construction of substitute self, therefore the setting of the interview can be interpreted as a place where an identity discourse is made which helps to understand how the participants are not only defining romantic relationships but are also building themselves. as rational people (Opsal, 2011).
The stories of some women suggest a positive nostalgia associated with the storytelling of the princesses, probably used as a means of evasion from negative events.
For example, parental divorce, if experienced in a traumatic way and at an early age, can lead to greater dependence on romantic love patterns.
The study revealed the need to continue to challenge the ideals of romantic love proposed by the media through education and socialization in an attempt to broaden the awareness that love can and must be healthy.
'Scenes from a wedding' narrates the interlocking between two people, the intimacy, the difficulty in separating from something that is now part of us even if it has become unbearable.
Balraj, B.
M., & Gopal, K.
(2013).
The construction of family in selected Disney animated films.
International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 3, 119121.
Berg, B.
L.
(2009).
Qualitative research methods.
Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Charmaz, K.
(2006).
Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis.
London: Sage.
Glaser, B.
G., & Strauss, A.
L.
(1967).
The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research.
Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company.
Illouz, E.
(1997).
Consuming the romantic utopia: Love and the cultural contradictions of capit-alism.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Illouz, E.
(1991).
Reason within passion: Love in womens magazines.
Critical Studies in Media Communication, 8, 231248.
Koontz, A., Norman, L., & Okorie, S.
(2017).
Realistic love: Contemporary college womens negotiations of princess culture and the reality of romantic relationships.
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36 (2), 535555.
Opsal, T. D.
(2011).
Women disrupting a marginalized identity: Subverting the parolee identity through narrative.
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 40, 135167.
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