Both fit the classical Disney view on women- You can’t really be happy or find success until a man falls in love with you. At that point your life can start, possibilities open for you. No success until then, just a mess of running around or needing a fairy to help you..
Snow was happy in that cottage with those dwarfs and would have been happy and successful if it weren't for a witch.
Cinderella was an abuse victim with nowhere to go. Do you think all people under this circumstance should just grow a backbone and walk out on their own?
Aurora was a romantic. She wanted to marry who she wanted to marry and rejected the idea of getting wed to some prince she didn't know.
Ariel has been hotly debated. Some think she's impulsive and driven by wanting a man. Some thing that it's her love of humanity that drives her more than anything. Either way, while she's being an impulsive teenager of a classic role that I've personally seen plenty in my life who's taken her own agency into her hands and does what she chooses.
Belle wants to not be a submissive, barefoot and pregnant wife to some brute in a small village. She gives up her freedom to save her father and winds up finding someone who appreciates her for who she is and doesn't want her to change. She doesn't like who he is, and he changes his bad habits.
Jasmine, similar to Belle, starts in a situation where she has life with a domineering husband threatened to be thrust upon her. She finds love with someone she prefers, sniffs him out rather easily, and chooses her own way.
Mulan... I mean... Just Mulan.
Tiana has ambitions out of the household and owns her own business. She realized when being tempted by Facilier that if you're successful and you have no loved ones to share it with, then it can be empty. Someone who falls in love and gets married isn't submitting to the Patriarchy.
Merida. Just Merida.
I think Frozen does it best. Because it gives two different paths and two different possibilities. Anna is the romantic. She's dreamt her whole life of having a family of her own. She finds love with a guy who respects her and loves her and makes mistakes every once and again, but nobody is perfect.
Elsa seems to be aromantic, and she has her life on her own, lives life the way she wants to be, is totally independent and winds up finding fulfillment with her life by the end of the second film living with the Northuldra.
They are both valid lives and both valid choices. It's what they want. I'm not going to treat women like children and tell them that what they want isn't valid. I have more respect for them than that. Feminism is believing that a woman should strive to be whatever they wish to be. It's not telling anyone that their goals aren't valid. Some girls like the whole Princess thing. And I think that telling black girls that they can't get the traditional princess treatment is just another source of exclusion.
Excluding the Tar Baby cartoon, of course.
Why? People have taken that term and made it into a racial slur, but this fable is the origin of the term. We're talking a lot about the importance of origins, and this story is completely innocent.
On a completely separate note, anyone heard from Brer Oswald at all? I'm worried.
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