The Awesomeness of the Disney Princesses (and You, Too!)

Okay. So this is what I have to say about Disney Princesses.

Regardless of what you think about them and patriarchal institutions and misogynism in the field and stuff, they are all awesome. ALL of them. And that includes the ones who aren't traditionally included as princess, such as Alice from Alice and Wonderland, Meg from Hercules, and Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Let's start at the very beginning, shall we?

Snow White, the movie, was released in 1937. The movie was kind of a censored version of the original story by the Brothers Grimm, which involves two failed assassination attempts by the Evil Queen using a poisoned comb and poisoned laces, which is an old-fashioned way of saying corset. It also involves the Queen not being chased onto a cliff by woodland animals in the middle of a thunderstorm because ACTUALLY she lives and is invited to Snow and Charming's wedding, where they force her to wear a pair of red-hot iron shoes heated over coals and she then dances herself to death. They toned this down for the first Disney movie because they thought it was too violent. Okay, fine. I have no problem with this.

Snow White is awesome because she is so nice. ALL THE TIME. If I had to live with seven dudes, I would not be nearly as nice. I would be smacking people, throwing water on beds, screaming myself hoarse at them for not sitting down to pee (because seriously, it's gross when they miss), and forcing people to help me clean. Not Snow White- she is patient and kind and nice to animals and she legitimately loves all of the dwarves like they were her little brothers. And I understand the little brother thing, because I happen to have two- but I got really lucky on the brother front. Therefore, Snow White is awesome because in addition to having to clean up after seven smelly little dudes and being super nice about it all of the time, she has to deal with the woodland animals, who are very nice and help her with the cleaning but who also probably make a huge friggin mess with the droppings and shedding and hairballs and stuff like that. Gross me out the door.

In addition to this, Snow White is, in fact, the youngest of the Disney princesses, at fourteen years old. This is both awesome and creepy, because on the one hand, she is probably the nicest teenager to ever exist, fictional or otherwise, and on the other hand, Charming has some things to answer for about his pedophilia issue.

I just made that really awkward. Sorry.

Okay, the next princess film, Cinderella, came out in 1950. Cinderella, like Snow White, also has to put up with a lot of crap. She also has animals and their messes to deal with, but on top of having an evil stepmother who doesn't like her, she also has two stepsisters who make her life actually miserable. Seriously, all modern adaptations of Cinderella should probably feature her being taken away and her stepmother being arrested for child abuse and violation of child labor laws, because SERIOUSLY THERE ARE SO MANY PROBLEMS GOING ON and it's why all modern adaptations of Cinderella are cheesy to the extreme. (But we love them anyway. Especially ones that involve Selena Gomez and choreographed housecleaning.) But Cinderella is awesome because she is charming and deals with all of her abusive relatives gracefully and elegantly, which is how a princess should really behave.

After Cinderella comes Sleeping Beauty (1959), whose real name is Aurora. According to Disney's official website, Aurora is kind of shy. To me that already says she's awesome, because if she's shy then she does a great job with socializing with people and with being charming around her friends. But she's also awesome because she has this thing where she goes out in the woods and her animal friends help her pretend that she has a boyfriend and she has a great imagination and stuff. Before Tangled came out, Sleeping Beauty was my favorite Disney movie, so yeah.

Next we have The Little Mermaid (1989). Ariel's story kind of flummoxes me a little, because admittedly the primary reason she wants to be human is for Prince Eric. And you know what, that's fine- it's just that people get all nasty about "SHE'S NOT BEING TRUE TO HERSELF BECAUSE SHE FEELS LIKE SHE HAS TO CHANGE FOR HIM ROAR ROAR ROAR FEMINISM ROAR ROAR ROAR THE PRODUCERS ARE MISOGYNISTIC BLAH BLAH BLAH." Yeah, whatever. The thing is, Ariel had other reasons for wanting to be human, too. She was fascinated by human culture and the tools and the things they used. She would have been a fantastic anthropologist. The only thing I don't like about Ariel is the color of her hair, because ain't nobody got hair that actual color unless they dyed it. And where do you get dye that will stay in underwater, anyway? But regardless, Ariel is awesome because she cultivates her talents and because she's interested in learning about other people and places.

Beauty and the Beast came out in 1991. Belle is another favorite Disney princess, in third place for me, because she loves to read and learn. "But that's why everyone loves Belle!" you object. "Don't you have anything new?" Yeah. Belle loves her dad. I think that's awesome. Snow White, Cinderella, and Ariel all have parental issues. Aurora's parents are just plain weird. (Well, her dad is, anyway. He's really friggin weird.) But Belle was raised by her father, and she turned out not like Gaston's screaming fangirls and even though that wasn't "normal" at the time, it was still okay, because Gaston thought she was hot and so did Adam, which is the Beast's real name, and better yet Adam saw that Belle wasn't just going to be happy living with him in the castle so he tried to help her by giving her a whole friggin LIBRARY as a present to say "Welcome to prison!" (And then, after some stuff that is definitely not Stockholm Syndrome, they fell in love and got married.) Belle is also awesome because even though she's not stupid, she knows that Gaston wants to kill Adam, she still stands up for him and defends him and her father. Belle is educated and talented and a strong independent woman who don't technically need no man but who is lucky enough to get one who gives her libraries and stuff.

Aladdin came out only a year later, in 1992. Princess Jasmine is another personal favorite- she was the first Disney Princess of color, for one. Also, her name in the Arabian Nights collection is Princess Badroulbadour, which is like the coolest name ever. (Not that I would name my kid that, or anything.) Also, Jasmine is clever. She's smart and talented and pretty, but she won't let herself be manipulated, which I think is great. Aladdin has to work to win her over, which is what all guys should do anyway, regardless of how much effort it takes to get a girl to like them. Sometimes you have Prince Charming- literally all he had to do was kiss Snow White (who was still fourteen by the way) and she fell for him. Aladdin had to work for it, and we all admired him a lot more in the end for it. Jasmine is actually a strong independent woman who don't need no man, but who is lucky enough to get one anyway.

After Princess Jasmine is Pocahontas, whose movie came out in 1995. Pocahontas is another princess of color, which is awesome after five white princesses. Pocahontas (the movie) is all about duty, and what I like about Pocahontas (the princess) is that she was the first princess to send the message that being true to yourself and your own desires is more important than your duty. Sure, the other princess movies have all had that message to some degree, but it came out much more strongly in Pocahontas (the movie). Duty is great, when you are capable of performing it- but when you can't do it, you shouldn't have to. Also, Pocahontas has the sassiest animal friends so far, and she jumps off waterfalls for fun, which I am totally jealous of. (And she gets to run around in nature with hardly anything on and even though if I did that I would blind everybody with my brightness and whiteness it would still feel very comfortable. It was a hundred and four degrees in Provo on Friday. Ugh.)

Next comes Mulan. This movie came out in 1998, the year I started kindergarten, and was the first movie I ever saw in theaters. I was a little bit scared of it in the theater, but I liked the popcorn and I thought Mushu was funny. Mulan is awesome because she is also a princess of color and because she's not like the rest of these princesses, who are expected to get married and have babies anyway whether or not it's done for love. Mulan didn't focus on finding a man and getting married; she focused on helping her dad and saving China. And you know, it's perfectly fine to find a man and get married; Mulan didn't really want to do it and the matchmaker said she wouldn't be very good at it- but she didn't ridicule the four other chicks who went to see the matchmaker with her for wanting to get married and have kids. She just chose a different path. There are no right or wrong answers to the question "What should any woman, fictional or otherwise, do with her life?" Mulan chose a different answer to the question than most girls. It wasn't about proving herself to be better than men, either; it was about taking her father's place so that he wouldn't have to fight- about duty, actually. And lucky Mulan, she got to be with Shang in the end anyway, so everything was lovely. (And Mulan II wasn't actually a terrible movie. I mean, it was terrible, but the songs were cute and so were the adorable little princesses and it was just funny okay?) So Mulan is awesome for all of those above reasons but really, I think she's awesome because she kicks butt. (That's my personal primary reason for loving Mulan so much.)

After Mulan is The Frog Princess, which came out in 2009. Tiana, the star, doesn't start out as a princess, but she's really cool and she works so hard to make her dreams come true- she doesn't need a fairy godmother or a sea witch to get what she wants. She just goes and does it. I was a big fan of the New Orleans-Cajun stuff, and the voodoo and things like that. It was way cool. But my primary reason for liking Tiana, who is the fourth Disney princess of color, is her hard work and determination and the fact that she doesn't take crap from anybody, especially not her prince, who at the beginning was an idiot and gradually got smarter through the movie.

And then, after Tiana comes Rapunzel, who starred in Tangled in 2010. Rapunzel is my favorite Disney Princess; she replaced Aurora when I watched the movie. First of all, Rapunzel is incredibly talented. She can do just about anything she wants. And she's willing to do anything to get what she wants- but she also has a conscience. She's worried about hurting people. And she has such a rosy view of life, despite what Mother Gothel has told her- she thinks people are nice and she's willing to take chances with them and listen to their stories. She has a great imagination, she's creative, she loves to read, and she's capable of protecting herself with kitchen implements. I mean, there are so many reasons that Rapunzel is awesome that I'm going to curl up on the floor and cry because I can't be Rapunzel because I can't deal with having hair that reaches my shoulders, let alone seventy feet of it.

In addition to Rapunzel, there's Merida. Brave came out in 2012. It's been a while since I had to think about my babysitting adventures, but looking back, they weren't so bad. Hindsight is 20-20, am I right? I haven't seen all of Brave, but I have seen the end, and although Tiana liked her mother, Brave is the first princess movie that really focuses on the relationship between mothers and daughters. In fairy tales, mothers and fathers tend to be either awesome (which means they're single) or horrible (which means they aren't your biological parents anyway.). Disney hadn't really produced movies where both parents were strongly present in their daughter's lives until now, and it's very exciting to see how that changes the idea of the Disney Princess. Also, if you haven't heard about what Young MacGuffin is actually saying during the movie, you should look it up. It's great. There may be a possibility of a thing there with him and Merida, but the great thing is that there really doesn't have to be, because Merida controls her own destiny and it doesn't matter.

And later this year, we're gonna have Frozen, which I believe is the story of the Snow Queen, by Hans Christian Andersen. Now, it's been a while since I've read The Snow Queen, but as I remember it, the girl's brother gets in trouble and she goes through a forest, meets a robber girl, rides a reindeer to Finland, rides a sleigh to the North Pole, and rescues her brother, all by herself, because she is simply that awesome. I sincerely hope that Frozen will follow the tradition of awesome Disney Princesses.

And you know what? No matter what people say about how "there need to be more princesses of color!" or "there need to be non-heterosexual princesses and princes!" and "the princesses need to be more independent of the princes!", the Disney Princesses are still awesome. And Disney has made videos and statements about the Princesses lately where they've said that being a princess is about who you are, not what you look like, and that it's shown in what you do and say.

Keeping that in mind, my favorite thing ever said about the idea of princesses comes, appropriately enough, from A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The main character, Sara Crewe, says, "'Whatever comes,' she said, 'cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.'" This is a great way of saying that you should always try to behave as befits your best self.

I am an idealist. I will admit freely that on some matters of social justice, I am quite liberal. But I also know that no matter how much I worry or make blog posts or cry about the starving children in Africa, there are always going to be people who are horrible and bad and wicked, and there will always be people starving somewhere, and there will always be children without shoes whose parents were killed by land mines or rebel armies. There's simply nothing I can do about it, because I cannot control the actions of other people. I cannot say, "Let there be peace." Peace won't happen because I want it to. In fact, peace won't happen if a hundred million people want it to. It just won't, because there is always going to be something bad happening on this earth.

"Sounds kind of pessimistic, Sarah," you think, shaking your head at the screen.

It's really not. Having accepted the fact that people will be people, and that boys aren't going to like me no matter what I do about it, and the fact that crazy men holding big wooden crosses will stand on the sidewalk as I head home from church and rudely inform me that I am going to hell because Mormons don't believe in the saving power of the cross, and the fact that Obama might be an okay president who's made okay choices like we all have done- it's a lot easier for me to say, "Well, I can't change all this horrible crap by complaining about it, but I can darn well change myself." And that's where being a princess comes in. If you act like a princess all the time, even if nobody is watching, even when nobody cares, even if you're a boy, even if you don't look like any of the Disney princesses (heck, I sure don't)- you can still be full of grace and you can smile and listen to people when they need a friendly ear, and you can stand up for what you believe in, and you can follow your dreams, and you can love and respect your parents even if you disagree with them sometimes, and you can take insults with a smile and say something gentle and kind and turn the other cheek. Honestly, being a princess means being Christlike, and since we should all be doing that anyway, why not start now?