Unrealistic Romances: Disney Princess Movies

Love has always been a wide topic of discussion. It intrigues and fascinates people, pulling them into the media-constructed world of love at first sight and dramatic heartbreak that can only be found in movies. Everyone likes movies. Movies are a common entertainment throughout the world. However, some directors try to relate to the general population through movies, especially movies in the genre of romantic comedies. These kinds of movies try to portray what perfect love is like or even just what it is like to be devastatingly heartbroken. These tales give us a preconceived idea of what love is supposed to be like before we experience it for ourselves. The unrealistic concepts that are put forth by these movies can be detrimental to people’s love lives and even to how people perceive the world around them.

In 1937 Disney released its first fairy tale princess story Snow White. The movie was immediately popular, especially with young girls. Since then, Disney has released ten other princess stories, and in 2000 Disney put all the princesses together in a collection and started calling the collection “Disney Princess”. The worldwide sale of the Disney Princess collection is referred to now as the “Princess” phenomenon. Some view this marketing technique as harmful to preconceived notions that girls acquire after watching Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty while they are growing up. The princess concept creates a “very narrow and prescriptive view of femininity, and one that ought to be outmoded in the 21^st Century” (Ebner).

The Disney Princesses all have a few things in common besides their “damsel-in-distress, I-need-a-man-to-save-me” stories. They are all physically beautiful, timid, and are all waiting around for their true love to come to them. Disney’s focus on physical beauty shows little girls that they have to be beautiful from society’s viewpoint to get the man of their dreams. The notion of being timid and waiting for a man to start the girl’s life because she depends solely on him, sends the message that if women would just wait at home and clean, then one day their true love and prince will come, and all their dreams will come true. This is a dangerous view of life because it encourages women not to try to better themselves or be successful, but to wait for and depend upon their husbands. This view of life also gives the idea that everything women want will be handed to them without any work on their part at all. As Ada L. Huxtable said in her article Living with the Fake and Learning to Like It, “ I do not know just when we lost our sense of reality or our interest in it, but at some point it was decided that reality was not the only option” (Huxtable 197). What Huxtable means by this is that society’s grip on reality has become blurred in the recent years. This also includes the romantic part of society. What is happening is that women and girls are choosing fake romances like the ones presented in the Disney Princess movies, instead of doing their best in a real relationship that could potentially be hard to deal with.

This preconception of what romances should be like has given women and girls unrealistic expectations on romance and love, whether they be consciously aware of it or not. Women and girls will compare their possible significant others and even their husbands to the ‘perfect’ men in these fairy tales that they have been watching since they were little. While this isn’t always something that women are consciously aware of, it can damage relationships. These movies about fairy tales give unrealistic expectations of what a relationship is supposed to be like and can also damage future relationships. “Love is not breathlessness, it is not endless excitement, it is not eternal passion,” love is about sacrifice, working things out with your loved one, and sometimes is very difficult (Disney Movies). This idea that love is perfect and effortless can damage relationships because it can lead to women not be happy with what they have and are blessed with; and also to women not trying hard enough for the relationships in their lives that matter the most because women might think that relationships should be very easy due to the precedents set forth in the Disney princess movies.

These unrealistic expectations of what the perfect man should be, as shown in the Disney movies, besides harming the women of the relationship, can leave husbands and boyfriends thinking that they are not good enough and that they never will be in comparison to the Disney’s heroes who are the seemingly perfect men and who share their feelings and always know the right things to say and do. In addition, wives and girlfriends can be frustrated with their husbands because these women feel like they aren’t good enough in comparison to the Disney princess precedent, which some women believe while growing up are the ideal and women are hardwired to believe that these princesses are what their husbands desire the most. Also, the time that women spend obsessing over the perfect prince, or anything other than their significant other, can make the relationship unstable and more likely to fall apart (Brotherson). This is seen especially in today’s society, where the rate of divorce had gone sky rocketing up in the past several years. While none of these divorces are, on the outside, caused by just the unhappiness that men and women feel about not being good enough for their partner, if one would dig deeper into the past of the broken relationship, one would find that these precedents are a big part of the broken marriage or relationship. This is a problem that should be studied very closely.

Sexuality is something that should never enter a child’s world. Sexuality, however, has become a major part of the 21^st Century society, even an acceptable one. Provocative images are all over the world and they are woven into almost everything that is made for society. Commercials, television shows, advertisements for any store or business, and movies all have majorly sexual themes. These are all things that children watch and notice. According to Beulah Amsterdam from the University of North Carolina, babies begin to have a sense of “self-concept” when they are two years old (Pendergrast 22). This means that babies start to recognize that it is themselves in the mirror opposite them. This awareness of one’s bodies comes long before or sometimes during that time when children are exposed to society. They are exposed to society in movies, namely cartoons ones such as the Disney movies, and through the television. This self awareness proves that children know that difference between being skinny and being fat and which one society thinks is better by the images that these children see, which includes the concept of sexuality. In the Disney Princess movies, sexuality is still a major role. From the princess Jasmine’s midriff baring outfit in Aladdin to Ariel’s seashell bra, which is her only piece of clothing, in The Little Mermaid. Featured along with this sexual phenomenon is the ‘thin is beautiful’ and the ‘way to have the perfect life.’ This problem is one that is seen in the Disney princesses as well as in modern day society. Society puts the images of waif thin models, who are supposed to be very beautiful and are inadvertently role models for many people, all in their advertisements and movies. Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Belle, Ariel, Jasmine, and Tiana, are all skinny with seemingly size zero waists. These movie characters are idols for young impressionable children and have been for decades now. These princesses, if turned human, would not be able to be healthy and still have the same body that they have as cartoons in movies. With these types of role models “children… grow up knowing that can never be thin enough and that being fat is one of the worst things one can be” (Bordo 48). These unrealistic body images that are presented throughout one’s entire life can harm relationships in one’s everyday life. The images can cause people to see their bodies as unacceptable and ugly, when, in all actuality, every one is different, and every body is beautiful in its own unique way. This can be potentially harmful to relationships because it can give the woman, or even the man, a faulty sense of their body which can led to feeling depressed and stressed all the time. These feelings are often destructive to relationships as they are selfish feelings, meaning they are feelings that don’t take into consideration the other person in the relationship.

The image that women should be beautiful and pleasing to everyone is one that many women, especially feminists, should have a problem with. The focus on physical looks rather than having intelligence at the forefront is dangerous to young, impressionable girls who look up to their parents and media, like Disney, as they are growing up. It is a scary occurrence when little girls value their looks over their knowledge. This idea that beauty is more desirable than intelligence is dangerous because it invites girls and women to the mindset that they are not good enough and that they should try their hardest to be what the world considers beautiful and then they will be happy. This faulty sense of beauty can be “perilous to their mental and physical health” (Orenstein). What women should understand is that instead of being physically beautiful to the world, they should be smart, intelligent, opinionated women, and then they will become beautiful in their own right.

Princesses have moved beyond even physical beauty in recent years, however. Disney has begun to market its Princesses with excessive jewelry and sparkles and overflowing dresses that signify wealth. This sends a message that you must be rich to be happy. This idea is a dangerous impression to have especially while girls are coming of age. They will have unrealistic goals for their lives as they grow and begin to have their own lives and have to support themselves. These unrealistic goals are dangerous because they instill in young girls the sense that they don’t need to take care of themselves and pursue their dreams.

The focus on beauty with increasingly young girls is one that should not be ignored. Girls should be taught to love themselves exactly how they are and to want to move forward in their lives on their own. Girls should have ambitions, dreams, and hopes for the future that they can make into a reality by themselves. They should also have healthy outlooks about love and the happiness it can bring people. “If women and girls know the difference between fantasy and reality then they don’t negatively effect them. However, in today’s generations, parent’s don’t make it clear to their children the difference between fantasy and reality” (Verret). This is true. If girls understand that what they see in Disney movies is fake and just watch the movie for what it is, a fairy tale, then they would be extremely less inclined to believe in or hope for the unrealistic romances presented in them and therefore less inclined to be disappointed that the world isn’t perfect like it is in fairy tales.