By Jos Truitt • @jostruitt • 15 years ago

The Princess

The Princess Comic Strip. Panel 1: Princess Sarah, a young girl with pigtails in a jumper with a flower on it and Mary Jane flats pauses while walking. Speaker out of panel:
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The Princess is a webcomic by Christine Smith that launched a few months ago about a young trans girl named Princess Sarah. It’s a spin off from Christine’s webcomic Eve’s Apple, which I like, but I love The Princess so far.

The story has focused on Princess Sarah’s parents’ differing reactions to her identifying as female, changing her name, and wanting to wear girls clothes. There is also a plot line about Princess Sarah and her best friend Irma, who’s a tomboy, as well as one about a bully in their class. Christine handles all these stories with sensitivity and humor.

I like the subtle changes in drawing style Christine has made for The Princess. Maybe because the lead characters are so young their designs are simpler than those of the older character’s in Eve’s Apple. This makes them easier to identify with. Humans see ourselves in everything – electrical sockets, the two dots and a dash that make a smiley face – and the simpler the representation of a face the easier it is to project ourselves onto and identify with it. This really works to the advantage of a comic about a trans girl.

I highly recommend jumping into reading The Princess while the comic is still new, and catching up on Eve’s Apple if you have the time, too (though there are a lot more completed pages to catch up on!). It makes this comics geek really happy to see well done stories about trans folks in webcomics form.

Boston, MA

Jos Truitt is Executive Director of Development at Feministing. She joined the team in July 2009, became an Editor in August 2011, and Executive Director in September 2013. She writes about a range of topics including transgender issues, abortion access, and media representation. Jos first got involved with organizing when she led a walk out against the Iraq war at her high school, the Boston Arts Academy. She was introduced to the reproductive justice movement while at Hampshire College, where she organized the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program’s annual reproductive justice conference. She has worked on the National Abortion Federation’s hotline, was a Field Organizer at Choice USA, and has volunteered as a Pro-Choice Clinic Escort. Jos has written for publications including The Guardian, Bilerico, RH Reality Check, Metro Weekly, and the Columbia Journalism Review. She has spoken and trained at numerous national conferences and college campuses about trans issues, reproductive justice, blogging, feminism, and grassroots organizing. Jos completed her MFA in Printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute in Spring 2013. In her "spare time" she likes to bake and work on projects about mermaids.

Jos Truitt is an Executive Director of Feministing in charge of Development.

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