It’s no secret that Disney’s films are progressing in more ways than animation style. Gone are the days of woebegone princesses singing about finding true love rescuing them from their boring lives and letting fairy godmothers do all the work. Female roles in Disney films are now more prominent than ever, and the change in desire, personality, conflict, and even appearance is worth noting. But to really understand what makes newer Disney female protagonists so important, we have to go back to the beginning to truly understand how far the company has come.
As the first Disney princess in the first full-length animated Disney movie, Snow White is our baseline for Disney princesses past.
Everyone is familiar with the storyline – the king’s daughter is abused by her stepmother who makes her clean all day and wear ugly clothes, so she sings about her problems to a wishing well and some woodland creatures. The stepmother is jealous that Snow White is prettier than she is, so she sends a hit man to take her down and bring back Snow’s heart. The beautiful princess escapes to the woods where she takes up residence with seven tiny men and spends her days cleaning the house with the help of some more woodland creatures (throwing all sense of sanitation by the wayside). Eventually, the evil stepmother realizes she’s still alive, so she turns into an ugly old woman, gives Snow White a poisoned apple, and thank goodness that prince is around because he cracks open the casket the dwarves put Snow in, kisses her (can we say necrophilia?), and they ride off in the sunset to live happily ever after.
To start, Snow White has almost no agency in this movie. She is forced into her unhappy initial situation. She is forced to escape to the woods where her best option is to live out the rest of her life cleaning a house for seven men (really not much of an improvement over cleaning for her stepmother if we’re being rational, but Snow definitely seems happier cleaning for men than she does cleaning for a woman. You can decide what the implications of that double standard may be). And she is literally dead to the world after she eats the poisoned apple, relying only on a prince to save her and take her to a happier life. Snow White makes no active choices in this film. She merely reacts to the situations around her. The typical character arc we expect to see in a film is absent in Snow White. The only thing about her that changes from beginning to end is her relationship status. She is about as static as a character gets.
But audiences liked Snow White because she was the ideal woman – passive, beautiful, kind, and happy to clean up after men. Of course, given the time period in which the movie came out, becoming a housewife was a pretty common aspiration for women, and to snag a good husband, she had to look and act and think like Snow White – that is to say be beautiful, clean, and not think.
To be fair, it isn’t just Snow White that suffers from an overly simplistic personality and general lack of power in her own life. Cinderella (1950) and Sleeping Beauty (1959) follow similar storylines and have similar female protagonists. Don’t let the fact that the movie is named after them fool you – these movies will not be about women who make choices in their lives and learn something about themselves. More appropriate names would be Fairy Godmother Saves the Day and Is Never Seen Again, and Prince Philip vs. the Dragon.
In fact, the women in these movies who have the most power (Evil Queen, Lady Tremaine, Maleficent) are the villains. Women with power are not nice women. Women with power should have been happy they were married, sung a nice song, danced with woodland animals, and cleaned a house. Women with power do bad things to the good girls who follow the rules of society. Don’t trust a woman in power.
Things started to change with Disney’s return to princess movies in 1989, and thus the birth of The Little Mermaid. We can see a pretty stark contrast between this and the old Disney princess movies in almost every aspect of the film.
For one thing, Ariel would have made Snow White shudder with her brazenness. She is a girl who disobeys the powerful man in her life, her father, over and over again because her own desires overpower her desire to adhere to the rules, giving her something poor Snow White never had – agency. Ariel causes the conflict in this film, and she grows and learns something about life in the 90 minutes we watch her. She is the first Disney princess who arguably has a character arc.
The things we like about Ariel are nothing at all like the things we like about Snow White, or the earlier princesses. Ariel is spunky, sassy, brave, funny – all characteristics that imply a sense of personality, desire, and intelligence. And while she is beautiful, it is not a defining characteristic of Ariel.
Of course, Ariel isn’t exactly a great role model for girls. She’s impulsive, she’s naïve in that she doesn’t think through the consequences of her actions, and she’s completely boy crazy. She almost had herself and her father turned into weird little sad crustacean things just so she could spend three days on land with a guy she thought was cute but didn’t actually know all that well.
The movie definitely has some questionable messages: sacrifice your life (and your voice) to be with the guy you like because everything will work out in the end; love at first sight is real!; making a deal with the devil (or the ocean’s equivalent) is the best way to get together with your crush; it is totally possible to get a guy to fall in love with you in three days without talking; etc., etc.
Finally, there is still the troubling matter that the villain in the movie, the nasty sea witch Ursula, is a woman with power. In fact, not only is Ursula a woman with magic powers, she is a woman who wanted more power (she wanted to be in King Triton’s position) and that is what makes her evil. Her motivation through the entire movie is to take over King Triton’s throne. But once again, a woman in power is no good. It’s women who fall in love and get married that are the good ones. Real power belongs to the men because they’re the only ones who can really handle it without turning into a giant monster who destroys everyone nice in the sea. It’s a questionable message to send, even if it is done so subliminally.
But things continued to improve for Disney princesses in the following years. Beauty and the Beast emphasized and valued intelligent Belle, even though the rest of the town scorned her for enjoying a good book. She is also brave and loyal, galloping into the dark, scary forest to save her father (a woman saving a man in a Disney film? Could it be?), and sacrificing herself to the Beast so that her father can be free. This is really groundbreaking material compared to the days of women who were just forced from one housecleaning position to the next. Belle has lots of agency; she makes her own choices even if they aren’t popular or have her father’s approval.
Belle also proves that a girl with a mind of her own isn’t something to be feared. Her intelligence doesn’t make her evil. She is still just as kind as Snow White or Cinderella; she just refuses to be treated like a doormat.
Unfortunately the Stockholm-syndrome-like, somewhat violent relationship that Belle has with the Beast is not exactly the kind of relationship a girl should aspire for, leaving this movie still wanting.
A year after Beauty and the Beast, Jasmine joined the ranks of Disney princesses. She, like Belle, has a mind of her own, is free-willed, and knows her value. Perhaps the most important line she says in the entire film is in response to Jafar, her father the Sultan, and Aladdin talking about her future as Ali’s wife. Jasmine says, “How dare you? All of you! Standing around deciding my future? I am not a prize to be won.” (emphasis added)
Here we have Disney making another truly bold move – they are outright speaking out against the objectification of women. That’s a pretty big statement for a children’s movie. Jasmine shares many of the same positive characteristics of Ariel and Belle, but she constantly challenges her male counterpart to prove that he likes her for her personality, not just because she is the beautiful princess, something totally unheard of in the days of princesses who only ever wanted to be lucky enough to marry a man they just met. The female characters are definitely becoming stronger, and the messages are definitely becoming clearer: girls, think for yourselves, follow your own passions, don’t let boys tell you what to do, there are more important things in the world than handsome boys.
Further, Jasmine plays a part in the eventual demise of the villain, who, this time, is a man in power. Jafar is almost a male version of Ursula – a once highly-respected member of the Sultan’s staff who has some odd, unexplained magic powers that he uses to gain control of the kingdom. We no longer see a woman as the one who wants the power and can’t handle it. Now, Disney is showing a man who let his power-hunger go to his head. Again, this is a complete turnaround from the messages they once sent.
Skipping Mulan and Pocahontas (because they aren’t really princesses), we arrive in 2009 at The Princess and the Frog. This movie tried its best to make some really big strides in portraying a protagonist who not only was intelligent, self-respecting, hard-working, and determined, she was also something a Disney princess had never been before – black. Tiana is the epitome of the independent woman image. She says over and over again that she refuses to rely on shooting stars to get her what she wants – she knows what she wants and she works her butt of to get it.
Disney had a really great message going with this film, but didn’t quite hit the mark. First of all, Tiana’s mother appreciates her daughter’s spirit and helps her to pursue her dreams, but she also nags at her a few times that she wants some grandkids. When is Tiana going to get married and settle down already? Love is more important than dreams. Maybe we could downplay this as Disney inserting the voice of society which Tiana refuses to listen to (to be fair, directly after her mother says this, Tiana sings a song about how she’s been working hard all this time and her dream is almost a reality so she’s not giving up now), but her mother is not supposed to be an evil character. Her mother is supposed to be a character we like and respect. So the fact that a good character is telling our heroine to knock it off with the dream stuff already and get married like a good girl is troubling.
In addition, there are the worrisome messages Prince Naveen sends. He repeatedly tells Tiana that she’s no fun, that she’s a “stick way in the mud,” that she needs to loosen up because she’s too focused on pursuing her goal of opening the restaurant. Whether we are supposed to agree with Naveen or not, the idea is still present that guys don’t like smart girls who pursue their goals. Girls who are interested in accomplishing their dreams on their own are sticks in the mud who need to loosen up.
Finally, the last flaw in the film comes when Tiana realizes that her dream of owning a restaurant just wouldn’t be complete if she didn’t have someone to love at her side. Maybe Disney thought that this happy ending (Tiana gets the restaurant, and she and Naveen fall in love) would appease both traditionalists and more forward-thinking audiences, but in reality it falls short of the strong messages they had been sending up until this point because the message it does send is that women are only successful when they get married. Yes, following dreams is important too, but they won’t mean anything if the girl doesn’t have a ring on her finger. And that is a bit disheartening.
Tangled sends a similar message. Rapunzel is probably the most strong-willed, sassy, stubborn princesses up until this point in Disney’s history. She even proves that she isn’t afraid to defend herself with her frying pan, and that she can get herself out of potentially dangerous situations by being nice and appealing to everybody’s seemingly hopeless lifelong dreams. She is definitely brave and adventurous and even sacrifices herself to save her love interest Flynn Rider, which is a big change from the traditional Rapunzel storyline. However, her strong will gets her into trouble sometimes, and the movie eventually ends with the recurrent theme that true love is the most important thing in the world. Overall, it is an intelligent movie that provides a strong role model for girls and shows Disney is purposefully creating princesses who girls can look up to as positive role models.
However, the company proved that they could do better in 2013 with Frozen. Anna is much like Rapunzel – she is energetic, adventurous, bossy, stubborn, sassy, funny, quirky – but the real improvement in Disney’s characterization here is Elsa. A girl born with the power to form snow and ice out of thin air with a simple wave of her hand, Elsa can’t help that she has magic powers, and they weren’t a curse put on her as a punishment for her parents’ misdeeds. She just has them. That she has very strong magic powers and is a female doesn’t make her a bad person, a very progressive idea for a Disney film.
Something striking about this movie is the Elsa’s repetition of the line, “Be the good girl you always have to be.” She says this to herself when she is struggling to keep her icy power under control, when she is concealing her power. We can see that she is trying to be a good person, she obviously isn’t evil, but she can’t help that she has powers and she can’t control them. When she finally “lets go,” and builds her icy castle, she says, “That perfect girl is gone.” She is done concealing her powers because it is exhausting, but she still doesn’t want to hurt anybody. This is an important point Disney is making, and they don’t make a show of conveying it. Not only is it okay for a girl to have power, society may tell a girl to be good by concealing her power, but really everyone wins when she embraces it. The notion of a “good girl” is far different here than it was in Snow White. Elsa teaches little girls that being good doesn’t mean concealing your strengths, it means embracing them.
Finally, the most obvious and well-received part of the movie that proved a major shift in Disney princess films was the ending in which Elsa saves her sister, proving that true love doesn’t have to come from a romantic partner and that these girls don’t need no men to save them.
This is a complete turnaround from the original Disney princess movies of the 30s and 50s, and one that sends some truly positive messages to audiences: girls don’t need boys to save them or make them happy, and the strongest girls embrace their power rather than concealing it.
It wasn’t an easy journey, and the company had to make many small steps in the right direction just as history continues to do so with regards to gender equality. The movies one sees and the messages one ingests as a child hold a lot of weight throughout the rest of life, though, so it is very important for Disney to be telling girls that the only way to happiness does not lie with a man, and that being smart, intelligent, strong-willed, and quirky isn’t just okay, it’s admirable.
Photo Sources:
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