“Men Want Girls With Good Taste. Calm, Obediant. Who Work Fast Pace. With Good Breeding, and a Great Hairdo. You’ll Bring Honor To Us All.” Terrible Female Role Models in Disney Princesses

 

Ever since Uncle Walt gambled and won with Snow White in 1937, the Disney corporation has used its famous Disney princesses to rule the hearts of young girls the world over. It’s the kind of cultural juggernaut that keeps an empire afloat and even today, the first thing so many little girls want to be is a princess.

Over the years, cultural critics have taken aim at the values Disney movies, particularly the princess ilk, have tacitly endorsed through the implications of their characters and stories. A great summary of these criticisms can be found in the documentary Mickey Mouse Monopoly.

Thinking about it, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Disney princesses have a spotty track record for not being the best role models. Some of the most enduring princess films come to us from the 1950s or earlier, and those with any creative control at Disney would have been mostly, if not exclusively, men. The kind of men who wouldn’t think anything of a female protagonist spending the entire movie waiting for a man to solve all her problems.

To their credit, a lot of the newer Disney movies suggest that its studios have taken these criticisms into account. From Mulan to The Princess and the Frog to Frozen, we’re not only seeing Disney heroines with actual agency, but we’re also seeing them come from more diverse and interesting backgrounds.

Still, as long as the classics endure, we need to keep reminding ourselves to have this conversation so the more toxic elements of the past don’t enter our children’s heads unchallenged.

That’s why we’re going to look at eight Disney princesses that we can learn from, but not necessarily as role models.

1. Ariel, The Little Mermaid (1989).

We begin with a pretty popular choice. There’s the issue of Ariel changing herself to please Prince Eric, but the real devil is in what she sacrificed. She gave away her voice, the main thing she would need to communicate with Eric when she did meet him. Since communication is the most important part of any relationship, this isn’t exactly a recipe for true love.

And so, by the end of the movie, Ariel marries a man she knows absolutely nothing about, despite having irreversibly changed herself for him. Yeah, not exactly behavior you want to imitate.

2. Aurora, Sleeping Beauty (1959).

To be fair to Aurora, it’s not like she had a lot of room to act as a role model. She’s in the movie for all of 18 minutes and her last line is about 40 minutes in.

But in that time, her entire personality seems to revolve around falling in love with a prince and that’s about it. She’s a bad role model by way of being a total non-entity.

It’s too bad the writers didn’t bother to come up with a character for the person who’s supposed to be the star of the show.

 

3. Cinderella, Cinderella (1950).

It’s hard to get too worked up about Cinderella because she was mostly trying to make the best of a bad situation. As cool as it would be if she booted her stepmother and stepsisters out the door while singing “The Internationale,” it would also be wildly out of character.  So what’s the problem then?

Well, aside from the early Disney staple of marrying someone you barely know, Cinderella really doesn’t take an active role in her own story. Whether it’s the Fairy Godmother or her mice buddies, it’s always the other characters who put everything into motion for her while she just kind of waits for good things to happen.

At least Aurora had the excuse of being unconscious for most of her movie.

4. Jasmine, Aladdin (1992).

Honestly, this one kind of hurts to do because Jasmine is a pretty awesome character. She sees Agrabah’s succession law for the garbage it is and declares loudly and proudly that she is not a prize to be won. She even decides to abandon her royal life and make her own way when it looks like the law isn’t going to change.

But the problem is her follow-through.

When she runs away, she gets hit with the harsh reality that she really doesn’t know anything about how life outside the palace works. And then, she kind of stops trying. A role model would have been motivated by her lack of knowledge and started reading up and tried again until she got it right.

It’s that kind of hustle that would have changed the movie’s title from Aladdin to Jasmine.

5. Snow White, Snow White (1939).

Snow White’s encounter with the Evil Queen goes so terribly, it’s like the “what not to do” part of a Stranger Danger PSA. When a stranger asks if you’re home alone, don’t tell them that you are. When a stranger offers you food, especially something they can easily tamper with like an apple, don’t take it.

6. Alice, Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Some of you may cry foul at me calling her a Disney princess, but even the Disney corporation itself is a little inconsistent as to whether she counts as one or not.

But what I can tell you is that her tendency to eat or drink any unknown substance she comes across, particularly unidentified mushrooms, makes her Poison Control’s worst nightmare.

It really is a good thing Alice dreamed the whole story up because she might not have survived otherwise.

7. Tinkerbell, Peter Pan (1953).

Fun fact: Tinkerbell was once considered one of the nine original Disney princesses. She may have a certain charm because of her sassy attitude, but the jealousy that underlies that attitude really brings out her dark side.

After Peter brings Wendy Darling to Neverland, Tinkerbell tells the Lost Boys that she’s a terrible “Wendy Bird” and that they should shoot her down. If not for Peter’s intervention, it’s strongly implied that Wendy would have fallen to her death.

So yes, Tinkerbell attempted to murder Wendy because she didn’t like the attention Peter was giving her. There’s probably a good reason she’s not a Disney princess anymore.

 

8. Belle, Beauty and the Beast (1991).

Much like with Jasmine, there are a lot of great aspects to Belle’s personality. She goes a long way in making intelligence and literacy desirable traits for young girls and encourages them to be all the way into what you love even if everyone else thinks you’re weird for it. Plus, while there’s a good chance some of the other Disney princesses would have fallen for Gaston’s charms, it didn’t take Belle long to figure out that he’s a narcissistic jerk and give him the heave-ho.

All of these are awesome qualities to emulate, but the problems start when the Beast enters the scene.

She agrees to be the Beast’s prisoner in exchange for her father’s life. And for most of their early interactions, the tension builds between them as the Beast shows controlling and abusive behavior. It finally comes to a head when Belle goes into the Beast’s forbidden room and his reaction is explosive. But after this, he gives her a massive library and they reconcile and eventually fall in love.

The problem is that when summarizing their relationship, I essentially just described the cycle of violence common in abusive relationships. Add that to the fact that she’s still his prisoner and their love starts to look a lot like Stockholm Syndrome.