Princesses have stood the test of time in Disney movies. Both boys and girls, men and women enjoy a good old princess flick. It’s true. I think the reason people like watching princesses is because they’re still human–they make mistakes, cause trouble, say the wrong things…okay now I’m just describing myself.
The first Disney princess to come into the spotlight was Snow White. Snow White is a weird name. Like, is White her last name and everyone just calls her by her full name? Is this what Beyonce was trying to do with her daughter, Blue Ivy? Snow White was super innocent and sweet. She lived with her evil step mother who had a mirror that told her Snow White was the fairest one of all. So being the super reasonable person she was, the Queen sent a huntsman to kill her step daughter. Nice. Snow White ran away and lived with some dwarfs. I think this was the first time that she’d ever moved away from home. Not only does she shack up with one guy, she finds seven! She cleans their house, plays with animals, almost dies, a prince saves her, and the dwarfs don’t get any credit for anything. Lame.
Another early Princess was Cinderella. Back in the day you couldn’t be a princess if your parents were alive. Cinderella lived with her evil step mother and ugly step sisters. She had a pretty crap life because she had to clean the house. Her only friends were mice–my favorite was Gus Gus. She even made them clothes. Cinderella had a lot of time on her hands. A fairy Godmother came to her and gave her what was really important–nice clothes and pretty shoes. She met the prince at the ball, had to run at the stroke of midnight, left her glass slipper, and ran home. The Prince went door to door looking for his princess and eventually found her. THE END.
I’m going to move into more modern princesses now and skip Aurora AKA Sleeping Beauty because she’s kind of boring. Ariel on the other hand, is not boring. She’s one of seven sisters. Her dad is the king of the sea, so she’s actually a princess before she finds her prince. Granted, she has no legs, hoards collects stuff, her best friends are sea creatures–she’s less than perfect. Ariel makes a deal with the devil (Ursula) in order to get legs so she can be human and stalk her prince. Ursula is like, okay cool, but I’m gonna steal your voice. And Ariel is like, okay that sounds fair. So Ariel barely gets the deal to work out–there’s a lot of ocean fighting with Ursula and she becomes one of the scariest monsters I’ve ever seen. Ariel and her prince, Eric, eventually get married and she wears an awesome 80’s wedding dress.
Beauty and the Beast is perhaps one of the best Princess movies around. Belle was just a small town provincial girl, wanting to find more in life. I think a lot of girls liked Belle because she was the first brunette princess and she was smart. Anyway, this big brute in town named Gaston wants to make Belle his wife. If I were Belle, I would’ve settled for Gaston in a heartbeat. But I’m a creep so what else is new? Belle’s father gets held hostage in the Beast’s castle for some reason and she goes to rescue him. She talks the Beast into keeping her hostage and letting her dad go to which the Beast agrees. Slowly, the two start to fall in love which is totally sick/amazing because the beast is an animal. Like, there’s some messed up stuff going on in this castle. They dance together, the eat together, they have a snow ball fight together. Eventually Gaston charges the castle and wants to kill the Beast. Beast ends up killing Gaston and I remember at a young age not even caring. Disney taught me how to not care about the deaths of people. Belle cries on the Beast and the spell is broken and he transforms into a really ugly prince. So whatever Belle, have fun with that.
Jasmine from the movie Aladdin, isn’t the main character of the story, but she plays a pretty big part. Like all Disney Princesses, she doesn’t have a mother. But her father is the sultan so that’s kind of cool. Jasmine complains about being a princess a lot so she’s kind of my hero. She wants to explore outside the palace gates and be free. She runs away, meets Aladdin and then Aladdin spends the rest of the movie trying to impress her. She also has a pet tiger named Raja which I always thought was bomb.
One of the newest princesses is Rapunzel. (I would mention Tiana from Princess and the Frog, but I didn’t see that one.) I think Rapunzel is my new favorite princess because she’s so sweet and cute and had amazing hair. Until her bf cut it off to save her life. Bummer. Rapunzel had an evil kidnapper mother that stole Rapunzel when she was little so Rapunzel didn’t even know she was a Princess until she was 18. ROUGH. Her kidnapper mother just used Rapunzel to keep her young because her hair had special powers. I know, I know, but they made it seem cool. Anyway, Rapunzel meets a guy, they get into trouble, and eventually reunite her with her dad AND mom. She actually has both parents.
Who is your favorite Disney Princess?
Kidz Showz 
With a two year old daughter at home, I am immersed in Disney Princesses. Sometimes I watch these movies and become horrified at the awful messages they send.
What are some of the messages that horrify you?
Cinderella – Do nothing, eventually cosmic forces will reward you.
Princess and the Frog – Hard work means nothing. The true key to success is falling in love with a rich guy.
Rapunzel – You can watch the person you thought of as your mother die, and feel no emotion whatsoever.
Oh I see.
Well, regarding Cinderella, I admire her so much for her hard work that she puts in the house and still maintain a happy attitude with her stepmother and stepsisters. I wish I can be that strong in terms of my attitude towards people even if they may hate me. And to be fair, I don’t see what more she could have done except leave the house and maybe she respected her father too much to do that. But, I do understand your point.
In “The Princess and the Frog”, doesn’t Tiana end up building that dream restaurant/inn that she desired to at the end of the movie?
I can’t comment on “Tangled”, since I can’t quite remember it.
I love Disney Princesses. Always have, always will. It’s fun to take a step back and look at how perfectly everything pans out, and how bizarre some of the story lines are. Everything is very convenient.
As for the messages, I never really got the messages when I was younger. I just always thought they were fun stories. I think most young kids aren’t paying attention to the big picture, but more so the characters, comedy, and songs. At least I was!
I think Rapunzel felt no remorse for her mother figure dying because she realized that she was treated so badly, locked away, used, and taken away from her real parents. But yeah, I can see where she should’ve felt a bit of pain seeing her mom die, no matter how bad she was.
I consider Aurora to be the most beautiful Disney princess, so I find it sad when everybody always skips her when talking about Disney Princesses.
My favorite Disney Princess has to be Princess Eilonwy from “The Black Cauldron”, mainly because nobody else likes her or knows she exists. I hate that Mulan is considered an official Disney Princess even though she’s not a king’s daughter nor a prince’s wife, whilst Eilonwy and Kida (from “Atlantis: The Lost Empire”) are not considered official Disney Princesses even though they are from a linguistic definition, princesses!
I quite love the Disney Princesses generally and don’t fall into the category of people hating them, saying they give bad messages, get annoyed by them, etc. I enjoy them for what they are and not for what people want them to be. Maybe I’m anti-feminist, although I highly doubt that, lol!
It’s funny, whenever I take “Which Disney Princess are you?” quizzes online (and I’ve taken a lot…embarrassingly) I always get Aurora! The movie Sleeping Beauty always bored me though for some reason. I didn’t like Aurora’s face because it was so sharp and point haha.
I haven’t seen the Black Cauldron in so long or maybe ever–so I don’t even remember Princess Eilonwy. I also wasn’t a big fan of Atlantis either. Mostly because it didn’t have good music. Hah But yeah I can see how that would be frustrating for a true fan like yourself. They should definitely be included in the bunch.
Lol I feel like I’m anti feminist all the time. I think you’re right though. People dig too deep into what these princesses stand for and they miss the beauty of what they really are–good people trying to find happiness.
I think I’m going to do a post about the “misfits” characters like Meg, Mulan, Esmeralda, etc. Not really princesses, but good characters nonetheless. 🙂
Sounds great! I’m glad you don’t consider Mulan a princess, lol!
If I had to pick a favorite female Disney heroine (non-Princess and non-villain), it’d be Alice from “Alice in Wonderland”.
Yes! Alice is on my list of misfits too..haha! Shoot…I just realized I forgot to include Merida from Brave…damn!
Well, (I’m gonna go all annoyingly and nerdy Disney fanatic now), but I’m HUGELY against the mixing of Pixar properties and Disney properties! Yes, I know that Disney now owns Pixar, but I still feel like both sides should keep their films and franchises separate. So, as you can probably guess, I was NOT happy when Merida became an official Disney princess!
Okay I kind of feel the same way. Lol we’re purists! Well the one thing that I hated about Pixar was that they didn’t have catchy songs for the characters to sing BUT Tangled was the first Pixar to have original songs so I felt that I should add Rapunzel. However, I didn’t add Merida because Brave didn’t have songs and I didn’t think the story was that creative. It seemed too simple. And I forgot about it 🙂
Hate to burst your bubble, but “Tangled” is actually a pure, legit, Disney movie! Yeah, it’s computer-generated animation, but it’s a Disney film from the Canon. I’ll be getting to it in my project soon.
OOOH Good. Nice. Whew. Thank you for that. I feel like more of a purist now 🙂
I like all the ones from around 1985-1995 since that was my childhood. Belle would probably be one of my favorites because she was a bit mousy and I probably could approach her in a French bar. I mean, then I’d have nothing to say.
I had no idea Sleeping Beauty’s name was Aurora. Are you lying?
Well, Aurora was one name, and the other was Briar Rose.
Briar Rose would be a great band name from the 80s.
Yeah the earlier ones were good, but they weren’t as exciting as the newer ones. Plus, we had the best Disney songs ever when we were young. Belle was definitely the mousiest one for sure. I could see you with Jasmine though. She seemed like she could get weird.
I never lie about Kidz Showz.
Right. I forgot Jasmine wasn’t very shallow. I mean, Aladdin was pretty hot but what could he offer her other than a great smile, nice body, and a monkey in a fez? Maybe she was shallow…