How the Princess Tales Are So Toxic

Mommy I want a prince like him, who will gift me a nice ring like this and will love me unconditionally, said my 8-year-old niece after watching a wedding scene from a princess movie. On hearing this everyone in the room laughed and the matter slid. What can we expect from a small kid to say after watching this?

There is nothing wrong with wanting to get love from someone but for that, we need to have a base. We need to know what are true aspects of a thing which young minds fail to understand and it’s is not their fault as they are still young.

These Disney princess movies are everyone’s favourite and many of us have grown up watching these movies. They were a beautiful part of our childhood. but today I want to highlight some of the improper teachings these movies preached us subconsciously.

Unrealistic Beauty Standards

The beautiful hourglass body shape, flawless skin, beautiful hair and dresses fascinates young girls the most. They often idealise them and want to be like them. Well, everyone wants to look beautiful but the problem comes when they see these fictitious and made-up traits.

Only one body type is shown; slim women with curves, no blemishes on the face, fair complexions being dominant, similar facial features in every other movie that is, big eyes, narrow nose, nice lips. We all know that beauty comes in different shapes, colours and sizes and it not correctly describe in these movies.

Cinderella, Belle, Ariel, Snow White all are fair-skinned slim women in the story. Specially in the case of Snow White, naming a character on her fair skin tone is indirectly supporting the beauty stands of being fair-skinned. If not then we need ‘Black Beauty' as the name of a princess also, not merely of a horse.

These unrealistic beauty standards can make children believe in a specific parameter and framework of ‘beauty’ and that too by the source of the fictional world. As it is easy to train the developing young minds, it becomes more fatal because they might see themselves and the world being ‘not so beautiful'.

Although princesses Jasmin and Tiana represent the black beauty in the princess world, we need more diversity in other traits also so that body positivity can spread out among different age groups. Also, the idea to ‘Inner Beauty' should be encouraged more to make our children better humans.

The Needy- Saviour Behaviour

A constant pattern of women being vulnerable and helpless is observed in most Disney movies. Whether it is Cinderella, Rapunzel or Snow White all of them are depicted as powerless and incompetent individuals who are incapable of rescuing themselves and long for a second person to help them.

These princesses are reflecting the idea of women's dependence on other gender and how they want to sit and watch someone to come and rescue them from despair while barely trying themselves to break the cage (except Frozen and Mulan).

Well, helping someone and asking for help is not bad, I am not against of it but not giving your best efforts and accepting the troubling situations as they are and then wanting help from someone is like falsifying yourself as needy. You are not needy if this is the case.

Women in these stories barely want to become self-dependent, especially financially. These tales indirectly illustrates that a prince is the only solution of all the existing problems of a princess and not their willingness and hard work to escape their ill conditions. So, they don’t bother trying to take the charge.

As both male and female protagonists are important aspects of any story so they both should be portrayed equally in some specific spheres. Here I am not considering any materialistic and status-related equality but cerebral equality. This will also satisfy the true meaning of gender equality to some extent.

Toxic Love

The synonym of Disney Princess movies is ‘Love in the air'. Unfortunately, the true meaning to love is generally misinterpreted. There is more of lust and crazy behaviour rather than actual ‘love'. Love is a divine feeling but viewers are receiving something else from these movies in the name of love.

Ariel giving up on her voice and tail in exchange of legs for a man was considered romantic in the movie. How come is it romantic to give up on your true identity and voice for a man who you met once only? Similarly with Jasmine who killed her desire to be free from castle as she married Aladdin.

In the love story of Cinderella, she met the prince once in her beautiful dress, danced with him and both fell in love and the day after he didn’t recognise her in normal clothes and then story goes to glass shoe continued. Then they got married at last. Love is portrayed as a joke here.

In Snow White, she just sang a song with a prince and then fell in love. Is this how the real love happens? Also, that non-consensual kiss of the prince was a real disaster. Same goes for prince in sleeping beauty story.

Beauty and the beast reflect how someone’s controlling and abusive behaviour is fine as long as they love you. They depicted that love can change someone’s mental condition but it is not always the case in real life. They need medical assistance.

In a nutshell I would say that it is fine to watch all these tales for enjoyment but remind yourself and young children that all these are just stories and we should know when and where we need to discriminate between good and bad teachings of the content that we consume. Be an aware audience.

Written By - Sanskriti Dimri