Princess disease is common in Asian societies, usually attributed to girls who are overly narcisstic and need to be treated like a princess. Probably because their parents (mainly fathers) overindulged them and they got used to a certain life style. Another term in the Chinese commonly understood slang of the last 10 years, right up there with and "good person card" (see previous post).
MJ and I went to Hot Pot today in Cary, NC (a prominent suburb of the Raleigh/Durham area) at a Chinese hot pot, and they warned us to not waste food by warning us against being "leftover women" ("剩女"). Pretty funny Chinese pun, as in don't be a girl who has too much leftovers on her plate, but in common vernacular it means a woman's who is left over after other candidates were selected and is still single. Yes, Chinese people have puns too! The whole idea of "leftover women" is a little sexist, and MJ would definitely reject the idea. Why do women HAVE to find a partner? Why is finding a mate before a certain age such a stressful endeavor for women? And why is it focused on "leftover women" and not "leftover men?" (Maybe because men don't have a magic age for finding a partner and are allowed by society to be older than the women and that being a "healthy" relationship as opposed to the woman being too much older than the men being frowned upon?) In fact, one of my big fears when I was single and struggling to find a girlfriend was that I would be a leftover man, especially with the perceived trend of Asian women being partnered with Caucasian men, etc. Luckily I was able to find MJ before I got left too far over!
Anyway, MJ definitely doesn't have princess disease, and I'm not sure why the Koreans/ Chinese have focused on women as having the spoiled child personification. I've actually met quite a few male friends who I would consider as having "prince disease." They must have the best things all the time, question me when I don't get the best thing, and go out to really fancy restaurants together when they know other people will pay part of or the entire bill. And they're not appreciate by returning the favor. So yes, just like there can be leftover men, there can be men with prince disease. Apparently one of the main causes of princess disease was the rise of the "Four Asian Tigers" (Taiwan, S. Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong) during the 1960's to 1990's that allowed those regions to amass great wealth and have beneficiaries of that boom time to have kids used to a certain higher expectation of life. In a sense, I was lucky that I was born into pretty rough conditions when I was a child; I didn't have great expectations. Just like I started off getting great grades in school so my parents always expected me to get great grades, if I had started with such a luxurious life I'd have had no place to go but down; instead my socioeconomic journey has been a steady climb forward, so that I can fulfill the pauper-to-prince story, instead of the prince-to-prince story, which no one finds interesting.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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