A Real Princess For Your Little Princess

I have a love-hate relationship with Disney movies. At once, the softhearted little girl in me feels attached to the movies that raised her, but at the same time, the mature woman in me realizes how these films don’t teach us the best lessons about femininity. After all, stories about mermaids trading their voices for legs suggest something deeply unnerving about the trade off's that women make in order function in "normal" society.

However, in recent years, Disney writers have created more hopeful images of femininity.

These heroines are not completely free from the etches of racism or sexism, and their stories don’t completely add up to what I’d consider to be the narratives of fully liberated women. But they are touchstones; these female leads are landmarks along the yellow brick road of improving female narratives.

Name: Dory
Film: Finding Nemo
At first glance, the Blue Tang fish from Disney’s Finding Nemo is no heroine: Dory is flighty and forgetful, as she suffers from short-term memory loss.  But don’t underestimate this absent-minded blue fish! Though Dory’s quirky behavior provides much of the comedic relief of Finding Nemo, she also teaches Marlin, Nemo’s frantic and overprotective father, the most important lesson of all: how to let go. Though she may not be a model of intelligence, Dory shows how the power of the heart is stronger than the power of the mind, and how the bonds of friendship can withstand the absences of memory.

Name: Princess Jasmine
Film: Aladdin
Young girls can admire Jasmine’s fearless spirit and sense of adventure. This princess leaves her privileged life behind in order to see the world beyond the walls of the royal castle. Rather than conforming to her father’s rules and selecting a suitor with money and status, Princess Jasmine longs for a life outside the parameters of conventional courtship.
Where earlier Disney films like Cinderella and Snow White narrate the heroine’s story from rags to riches, Aladdin tells a story of a female with all the riches in the world—after all, she’s the Sultan’s daughter—who abandons her royal treatment to discover life on her own. When she finds love on the Arabian streets, Jasmine defies royal tradition and chooses to marry Aladdin despite her father’s orders to choose a prince. Aladdin
teaches young girls that not all princes—ahem, Jafar—are worthy, and sometimes, the best men have nothing to offer but their love.

Name: Esmeralda
Film: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
There’s a beautiful moment in The Hunchback of Notre Dame that I’ll never forget: The hideous Quasimodo loses his mask at the Festival of Fools and gets discovered as the bell-ringer of Notre Dame. The crowd ties him up and tortures him by shouting hateful slurs and throwing rotten fruit—all the while Quasimodo’s father figure looks on, allowing the crowd to deliver the punishment he feels his son deserves for showing
himself in public.
The gypsy Esmeralda— risking her own safety— emerges from the crowd, looks into Quasimodo’s eyes and frees him from his torturers. Esmeralda demonstrates the importance of empathy.  If more high schoolers were taught this message, we’d have fewer suicide notes from gay teens. Esmeralda teaches us that in one way or another, we’re all outcasts, yet we still all deserve to be recognized as human.

Name: Pocahontas
Film: Pocahontas
Setting aside this film’s historical inaccuracy, we can still salvage a positive message from Disney’s Pocahontas. Princess Pocahontas teaches us a reverence for life and a profound respect for the earth—a lack of ethic in our rampant consumer society. This Disney Princess preaches for us to “listen with your heart,” something we’ve become deaf to amidst the clamor of relationship advice and dating rules. In life and in love,
Pocahontas throws caution to the wind—leaping off cliffs, darting through the forest, and plunging into rivers. This Indian Chief’s daughter stops a war in a sacrificial selfoffering, demonstrating that love conquers all, and the ability to love the other is the first step in fostering peace between different cultures. Our whole world needs to rewatch Pocahontas.

Name: Princess Fiona
Film: Shrek
From our first encounter with Princess Fiona in Shrek, we’re introduced to a leading lady who isn’t afraid to speak her mind: “You're not a prince!” she exclaims when awoken by the ogre Shrek instead of a handsome Prince Charming. Princess Fiona is not your typical princess; she burps, practices karate, and is unafraid to take on Robin Hood and his league of Merry Men. She’s sharp, witty, and quick on her toes.
At the end of Shrek, Princess Fiona hopes to be cured of the spell that transforms her into an ogress each night. Instead of being restored to her daytime beauty, Princess Fiona remains a monster, but—with Shrek’s love—is able to see herself as a beautiful princess despite her green exterior. Princess Fiona’s (non)transformation at the end of Shrek challenges the pre-requisites of princess status, arguing that inner beauty is paramount to physical beauty.
Increasingly over the course of the Shrek trilogy, Fiona becomes more of an active character. Shrek the Third (2007) completely reverses gender roles: when Shrek and his team of heros need rescuing, its Princess Fiona and the league of leading ladies that come to the rescue. Princess Fiona teaches young girls that they need not accept the role of damsel-in-distress, and demonstrates how women can be the heroes of their own stories.

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Amanda Cosco
		About the author:
		Amanda Cosco is a freelance writer. The city is her muse.  After completing a master’s degree in English Literature at Ryerson University in Toronto, Amanda packed up her life and moved to the city in pursuit of jazz, sex, and soup. Amanda completed her bachelor of arts at York University, where she had one foot in literary studies and one foot in journalism, earning her a double-major in English and professional writing. Amanda has presented her scholarly work at academic at conferences across Toronto, and her research on the metaphor of hunger in women’s fiction has received over $30,000 in grants and prizes. With her pen name, Lady Medusa, Amanda has left her digital footprints all over the internet. Currently, she’s blogging for several social media websites, and composing her first book of poetry, entitled "Autobiography of Skin. Follow her on Twitter @ladymspeaks
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