Are Disney stories what we thought they were?
It’s a Sunday morning with warm sunshine pouring through my window. So being the typical A-type personality, I decided it was a good time to do some cleaning. So I set up the perfect playlist and started rummaging through my stuff. And just like any sane person, I stopped all my cleaning when I found my old memories — my Disney storybooks
My connection with Disney storybooks goes back to the days when I couldn’t even read. My mother would sit with me daily at night and read me all these stories (patiently again and again!). I would then go back to the books, look back at the pictures, and recollect the whole story my mom would have told me. The pictures and the stories have been completely ingrained in my brain since then.
So naturally, I started scrolling through the books, and now I realized every book had something in common…either it is a poor girl waiting to be rescued by a prince or a girl adjusting to abuse just with the hope that the prince will change or a princess changing herself according to the expectations of the prince. Here two things are common, the princess depends on some random prince to rescue her, and the prince whose main job is to rescue the random princess.
Let’s take Cinderella for example. The story itself starts with ‘Once upon a time, there was a kind girl named Cinderella’ If you compare this with almost all the stories of Disney, girls are characterized as kind, humble, and gentle, and boys as bold, fierce, and brave. My point is why can’t there exist characters where a girl is bold and fierce and a boy is humble and kind? As a kid when you read these stories, you start to form impressions in your brain that a girl has to be kind or gentle for her to be liked by someone and similarly a boy has to be bold and brave to be liked by someone and to gain validation from the society. This becomes a starting point of stereotypes before even the kid interacts with society.
The second point is the whole story glorifies the abuse Cinderella gets from her step-family and how she does not respond. The story shows how she keeps on trying to work for them despite all the abuse. On top of it, they show that she was only able to escape the abuse because a prince liked her and took her away. Do we want to show the kids that this is the impression they need to have? That girl suffered through the abuse because one day a prince would come and rescue her.
Coming to Beauty and the Beast, no matter how they show the redemption of the prince, the beast, the fact is Bella, the beauty was a prisoner of the beast. This is a classic case of Stockholm syndrome. We are showing kids it’s okay to suffer abuse just because in the end you ‘might’ be able to redeem them which is another classic case of the messiah complex.
The story Mermaid is wrong in so many ways. She decided to sacrifice her voice and physically transform herself to meet the prince and make him like her. And we wonder why this happens in the world when these are the impressions created by the stories and society in us at a very young age. The story of Rapunzel just shows how the princess just waits for someone to rescue her from her high castle.
The story Sleeping Beauty shows how it’s completely okay for the prince to go rescue the princess and kiss her without consent just for the reason of breaking the spell. The same goes for Snow White. On top of it, this story also shows how it’s completely okay for Snow White to assume the role of a servant and do all the work including cleaning, and cooking for the seven dwarfs just so that they will let her stay with her. I just wanted to see how would they have written the story if a boy was in the place here.
We had Women’s Day and I’m sure there were a lot of conferences, and talks on how to remove bias, how to achieve equality, etc etc. But the problem here is we are trying to undo all the impressions we have had since childhood and that’s difficult because these are already ingrained deep into our brains. Undoing these takes a lot of effort and time as some of us are not even aware of these impressions.
Our generation has started undoing the good impressions, but this is not enough. The point is we started this too late. We must make sure the next generation does not have these impressions in the first place. It is time we have different perspectives via these stories and make the kids decide what path they want to choose. Presenting these different perspectives will help kids question things once they start interacting with society and that’s how we will be able to change things.
I want to see stories where the princess stands up for herself and does not wait for any prince to fix her life. I want to see the princess be described as fierce, angry, and gentle to say to the kids, that it’s okay to have a mix of everything. No emotion is good or bad, we are who we are and it’s not required for us to fit into any bucket.
For feminism, I see people saying that women need to advocate, women need to speak up…I completely agree, but that solves only half the problem. We also need to stop stereotyping men. That starts with first not expecting a prince to rescue a random princess. All Disney stories have the same message, i.e. for boys to be strong, and brave and that their life aims to rescue someone. Instead, I want to see stories where a princess rescues a prince just to show kids that it’s completely okay for a man to accept help from a woman that there is nothing to be ashamed of, and that it’s completely normal. I want to see stories where we show that a prince or princess’s aim shouldn’t be to save someone. It should first be to save themselves, follow their passion, and do what makes them happy.
Another common thing is a happy ending. But we all know, there is never a happy ending, life is full of highs and lows. Our ridiculous expectation of matching this Disney impression to have a perfect ending never lets us live in the present. So we also need stories where the prince or princess has self-doubt, makes mistakes, has depression or anxiety, and overcomes it on their own. We also need to show that this is going to happen again and again but now the prince or princess will have the confidence to overcome it and that’s what makes life beautiful. We need to show imperfections in our stories.
Another thing is the standards of beauty shown in the stories. I always felt good about myself whenever I wore these long, heavy gowns. But now if I look back, it was just an impression of beauty that I had after watching all the princesses. They draw out these princesses as fair-toned, thin, with long hair and heavy dresses. And when you grow up, you always try to fit in those standards of beauty because that’s the only thing you know about beauty.
Also, you see, every story has only a perfect prince or princess. It’s time we had the main characters who let’s say have ASD or belong to the spectrum. It’s time we had main characters that are from LGBTQ. It’s time we had different representations of main characters so that every race, class, gender, and orientation will have someone to relate to and will always know they are normal and beautiful. The Disney stories these days are for sure changing. Taking the example of Frozen or Brave, they are changing the perspective. But that just won’t be enough.
It’s time we had main characters that are real and show that we need not have everything figured out in life, we will fail, we will get back up and enjoy the present. We must increase representation and perspectives not only for our current generation but also for the next generation so that this becomes the ‘new normal’. We must tell these stories in such a way that the kids form impressions so that they question society and will not be afraid to break the stereotypes. That’s when we will be able to make a true difference.
