When we were little, we all read fairy tales. The funny thing is, in fairy tales the protagonist is almost always a little girl. And the story is almost always about a frail girl and the prince who protects her. Boys read them and want to be the prince, protecting their princess. Girls read them and want to be the princess, finding a prince who’ll protect them. I tried to recall the fairy tales I knew as a kid, and was surprised to find they don’t really skew by gender. Boys and girls read the same tales — explorations of strange worlds, the same prince-and-princess stories passed down for generations. But time passes, boys and girls grow up, and maybe they’ve all quietly accepted that the fairy tales they heard were lies. Most boys no longer believe in a princess worth protecting, and most girls don’t really dream of a prince coming to save them anymore. Thinking back on those old tales brings a wry smile. I can’t tell if it’s nostalgia, or the feeling that the kid who believed this stuff was kind of ridiculous. Still, the fairy tales never stopped. They keep telling the story of prince and princess, for whoever’s willing to listen.