Do girls dream of being a princess because they want to be sheltered?

An essay from the time of Princess Diana's death by a writer named Marjorie Williams has gotten some attention lately. There is some praise of it here and a particularly good take down here.

But there is something weird about the essay that neither its critics or fans seem to have noticed. There are two key parts here. First there is the confession:

But Diana's entry onto the scene in 1981 launched a far more visceral phenomenon. Diana meant something to women from the first time we saw her. ... Many women of Diana's own generation, schooled in feminism, wallowed a bit ruefully in the fantasy being enacted before our eyes, yet still we wallowed. 

And then there is the analysis and my question is this: Does the analysis below really explain the response described in the confession above?

Note, though, that it is the rare little girl who wants to grow up to be queen. To wish to be a princess is not simply to aspire upward, to royalty; it is also to aspire to perpetual daughter-hood, to permanent shelter. To dependency. And this is where Diana's grip on our imagination grew more complicated.

I don't think so. Or, to be more precise, I think it gets close but then ricochets off the target. And from that point the whole essay is just pointless.

The part about Princess Diana not growing up is right. She was always a little girl. But an aspiration for shelter? What does that have to do with a woman who was, if you'll pardon my bluntness, the very worst sort of attention slut. The road from Princess Diana to Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan is a very short one.

A fairy tale princess doesn't live a sheltered existence. She lives in a world where shelter isn't necessary because she is after all a princess. It's a world where the princess is the star and everyone else is just playing a supporting role.

And it's probably a harmless little fantasy most of the time. Fantasies tend to be harmless no matter how much some moralists claim otherwise. But it is something women should be much more embarrassed of than they apparently are.