Freud and Disney Princesses (Part I)

I'm going to go ahead and use the idea I gave my friend and psychoanalyze Disney's princesses. Because many of us grew up believing the lessons they taught us were pearls of wisdom that we could carry on through our teens into our adult relationships. Right?

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...

 Snow White
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...

 Cinderella

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.

 At least once a month there's a day when she'd rather use fire instead of soap and water to clean the house... Fire's sanitary, right?

Onto the next candidate...
 Sleeping Beauty (a.k.a. Aurora/Briar Rose)
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...)


3. You grow up completely isolated you from any social contact forcing you to hold conversations with forest animals

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).
 "How YOU doin'?"

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.
 "Oh Nyquil! YOU understand me!"

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?

Belle

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

(me in a bookstore)

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!

Shakespeare, Weenies and Gratitude

Am I the only one who still has mixed feelings about watching "Army Wives" every sunday? Its supposed to depict lives similar to ours... but how much of it is realistic and how much is heavy handed 'Lifetime' drama?
 

Since its getting so close to the 4th of July, the media's painted itself red, white and blue for the week, stores are selling flags out the yin yang and people are driving across state lines to buy decent fireworks for their weenie roast.


But, like every other holiday, the country-wide attention span is so short that it can only afford a few days of recognizing significant events (and honoring them with food and/or booze).


This is understandable when it loops right back around every year and the tradition becomes so monotonous that our children are bringing home macaroni diaramas and drawing pictures at school about an event they may be comepletely oblivious about.
 

In any case, its important to pause from the rush of any holiday (whether its something as big as Thanksgiving/New Year's or something as overlooked as Veteran's Day/Patriot Day), its important to pause and actually understand exactly what it is we're celebrating and why.

(God Bless America?)

Independence Day usually equals fireworks, picnics, barbecue and beer to the average person. To us it's possibly the one day a year that the efforts of our significant others are remotely recognized by the American layperson.

 

We experience this appreciation any time someone walks by in uniform, or we notice someone in a fresh regs haircut or a bumpersticker displaying their branch's pride.


"MY EYES!!!!!"


(I APPRECIATE YOU!!!)

When you're the one who has to stay at home when they deploy, every quiet moment is spent thinking about what they do and how dedicated you are to them...



but when they're home, life may resume how it normally does and we go right back to bashing their c/o's or commanders for being jerkholes when they come home in a bad mood and complaining about how the commissary never has YOUR brand of shampoo.



As long as we ourselves never take them for granted because we might just be the only one's who's opinions (aside from superiors) could actually make or break them as a servicemember.

So be sure to frequently remind them how much you love and respect them for their sacrifices to take care of you/your family and that they will be duly rewarded for a job well done when they get home...








...you were expecting something dirty?

You can haz MY cheezburger baby!!!!

We serve our country too, every time we boost their morale by thanking them for their service in just the right way... with booze, food and sexy time!

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

Fireworks, Boogers and Other Sexy Things

Alrighty so summer midterms came back and after several hysterical all nighters, I managed to pull out a C and an A respectively (both of which were waaay higher than I expected) So thank Jesus I DIDN'T have to completely rearrange my life.



My anatomy lab is the booger that will make or break my college career here at KSU because, in the Exercise and Health Science major, you're only allowed to attempt a class 2x before you're booted out. This will be my second attempt at the anatomy lab so if I didn't make a passing grade, I'd literally be packing my bags and transferring to another school just so that I wouldn't have to spend YET ANOTHER 3 years away from my husband, pursuing a degree I didn't need.



OH I almost forgot to tell you guys the awesome news!!! My husband is supposed to be PCSing back to...wait for it... GA!!!



But of course whenever one invests emotionally in such ideas, the military will always find a proverbial wrench to throw into your enthusiastic plans.



However, I made sufficient grades to stay in the EHS program (so far *crosses fingers*) so I can continue to grace the KSU campus with my classy, sophisticated presence...


He's supposed to come for a visit in late July for a week so I'm breakin' out the razor, flat iron and beatin' the treadmill to fluff up my sexy.

Back in Black!

HELLO ALL MY SWEETHEARTS!!!

Sorry its been a few millenia since my last post, but I've been super crazy busy.

Updates: That group project that I was whining about forever....got an A!!! so all the blood sweat, tears and violence was all worth it.
After which I promptly rewarded myself with a 2 week trip to visit my hubby (Which was severely overdue and brought me back to life).

 (Not my actual husband; mine's hotter... ;)

Because of a job well done and how stressed out I'd been, he decided to spoil me rotten, spending all our money on touristy ventures in San Diego. We went on a dinner cruise, explored old submarines and 18th century sailing ships, went to the movies, pigged out on wings and vegged out with netflix and redbox and basically just played like a couple of kids for 2 weeks. Granted he DID have to work most days but it was worth it not to have to do any homework and to be able to wait on him like I never get to do.


Bless his heart, he's got baby fever and I've got "still-in-school-itis" so we're agreeing to wait until I graduate before succumbing to our imminent parental duties.

Its been a month since I came home and I've just been trying to NOT fail my classes. This semester is Statistics and an Anatomy Lab. Also my work hours have gotten weirder, increasing to almost 30 per week so sleep and free time have to be planned out carefully so that my obligations don't suffer.

Recently saw 2 movies that I'm adding to my list of all time favs: Rock of Ages and Brave
- Rock of Ages: hilarious, music is phenomenal, familiar and kept me in goosebumps the whole time.
- Brave: excellent for mothers and daughters, funny, adorable and somewhat of a tearjerker but thanks to Disney Pixar, there is a happy ending with a heroine who's happiness DOESN'T depend on a prince-like figure (Finally!!!)
 

Soon to be added to the list: Magic Mike.... Channing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey, half naked, shaking their junk on a large digital screen. No other description needed. No script needed. I'm too shy and too married to ever set foot in an actual Chippendale's type place so the fact that they made a movie about it makes it accessible at a cheaper, safer distance. Thank you!!!
 (nom nom nom)
I took my dad to see Prometheus for father's day (which is supposed to be a prequel to Ridley Scott's "Alien" trilogy). I have to say that anyone with a uterus or a weak stomach should probably not watch this. The gore alone turned me off, but the storyline was also full of holes according to my husband and father (I hadn't seen the trilogy). So unless you're into special effects with little substantial storyline, go for it. Otherwise, just wait for redbox.


 More to come later!!!!