Believe in your dreams, your prince will come, singing birds will happily fly through your window and help you get ready in the morning, stepmothers suck and your entire purpose in life is to find your prince and live happily ever after...
Really?
Ok going in consecutive order, lets begin with...
Props to Walt Disney for ushering in the princess parade with this one, but she has to be my least favorite princess of all. Not just because of her high pitched whining speaking/singing voice, but also because of her blind trust of total strangers and her complete inability to rationally judge a situation.
Granted this was created for little children of 1939 and this was Walt's idea of how an innocent girl would react to her dire situation. But what exactly was the lesson being conveyed? Considering the time period and what was going on in the world, Hitler was rising to power, America was healing the wounds from the Great Depression and damsels in distress were still rampant ideas in the way of fairy tales. It is now a farcry from today's depictions of fairy tales...
WWII generation would've had a coronary at the thought of a princess weilding a sword leading an army. However, our feminists and free thinkers of the 60's and on would now applaud the empowerment of women as opposed to subjecting our children to the delicate and helplessness that is characteristic of a traditional princess. This is simply a product of our cultural evolution. Thank God.
Moving onto...
This is probably the most-referenced princess when speaking of hope in the face of daunting social adversity. She was the very first one I learned of as a child and back then, it was about the big poofy dress, the magic pumpkin carriage and suddenly going from being invisible to being the center of attention. What girl doesn't want that?
"Oh honey, isn't this such a beautiful church?..........honey?"
It never crossed my 4 year old mind that the prince couldn't even remember her face, but that he needed a shoe to tell which girl was the one he danced with the night before. Or that you could find your soulmate if you only looked like a duchess instead of the housemaid/custodian you might be in real life.
Onto the next candidate...
How would it be if your life had turned out like hers?
1. You're born, you have 2 good fairies bless you with beauty and a nice voice (the 3rd of which may have been the gift of intellect before Maleficent showed up.... ironic that that could've been the one gift that may have spared her some drama).
2. Then some jaded witch curses your life with a doom prophecy because your parents didn't invite her to their baby shower (don't know why, she sounds like a hoot...)
4. A stranger spies you when you're jammin' out alone and then proceeds to try to dance with you against your will (kinda like when you're at a club).
5. Then when you "fall in love" with this guy, you're informed that your entire identity is false, you can't ever see the hot potential sex offender you met earlier again, and you have to uproot from everything you know to live with parents you've never met to rule a kingdom you've never seen....
How do we handle such emotional trauma all at once? With comfort food and a nice long nap.
Then you wake up to the creeper you met in the woods, kissing your face and soon accept his proposal of marriage that just so happened to be arranged since your birth.
Moral: "You don't have any say-so in your own life whatsoever. But at least you're pretty!"
Onto the next princess contender!
For some reason between the 60's and 70's, Disney took a break from the whole princess enterprise, but finally in 1989, they said "Okay, we've had 2 blondes and a brunette. Need more diversity. Time for a red-head!"
This was my favorite princess as a child, but only because of Jodi Benson's killer pipes. She regrettably followed in the Disney princess tradition of not using common sense.
Young and naive or obstinate and rebellious? I'd say it was both that caused her to essentially sell her one redeeming quality to a witch in exchange for an extreme makeover for the primary purpose of winning a guy who only liked her for the very thing that she no longer has.
Witch or not, that's the kind of stupid decisions most of us make when we're 16, especially when daddy forbids it. But Disney did make some improvements as to how it ended (except for those awful poofy 80's wedding sleeves. Yeesh)
After she got her voice back, and even when she was turned back into a half-fish mutant, Eric still cared enough for her to risk his life. So when he saw the real Ariel, he still wanted to marry her. Of course the honeymoon would've been rather awkward, hence her father's selfless gift of making her permanent legs. Not a great body image lesson for young girls but a vast improvement from the previous princesses.
Moral: "If you sell out, change your appearance, he might notice you. But only if you can sing."
Who is our next princess?
Here is possibly the first breath of fresh air in the way of princesses as one of the few that behave as a strong, intelligent heroine rather than a wilting, helpless damsel in distress.
1. she's well-read and respects her father
2. she's brave enough to sacrifice her life for the people she loves
3. she calls guys out on their crap and bases her feelings for them on their character rather than looks
4. she's not afraid to have friends who are weird or different...
Aside from the whole "in love with a beast" and "poke through other people's stuff" things, she's a princess I'd actually like to be friends with.
Moral: "Stay true to yourself, be kind to everyone, and it will always come back to you."
I shall close this post with a thanks to Disney for making their photos so accessible via internet and I will continue analyzing the other princesses in another post. Keep checking back!
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