This article explores the contrasting views on Disney princesses, with one perspective criticizing them for promoting submissiveness and unattainable beauty standards, while the author defends their enduring appeal as portals to a world of wonder and longed-for justice. While acknowledging criticisms regarding characters like Snow White, Cinderella, and Belle, the piece argues that these fairy tales tap into a fundamental human desire for a world where good triumphs and fairness prevails, rather than dictating real-world behavior. The author concludes that transforming princesses into modern, empowered figures would diminish their magical essence, suggesting instead that they serve as valuable reminders of an ideal, albeit fictional, world.

This article explores the contrasting views on Disney princesses, with one perspective criticizing them for promoting submissiveness and unattainable beauty standards, while the author defends their enduring appeal as portals to a world of wonder and longed-for justice. While acknowledging criticisms regarding characters like Snow White, Cinderella, and Belle, the piece argues that these fairy tales tap into a fundamental human desire for a world where good triumphs and fairness prevails, rather than dictating real-world behavior. The author concludes that transforming princesses into modern, empowered figures would diminish their magical essence, suggesting instead that they serve as valuable reminders of an ideal, albeit fictional, world.

This article explores the contrasting views on Disney princesses, with one perspective criticizing them for promoting submissiveness and unattainable beauty standards, while the author defends their enduring appeal as portals to a world of wonder and longed-for justice. While acknowledging criticisms regarding characters like Snow White, Cinderella, and Belle, the piece argues that these fairy tales tap into a fundamental human desire for a world where good triumphs and fairness prevails, rather than dictating real-world behavior. The author concludes that transforming princesses into modern, empowered figures would diminish their magical essence, suggesting instead that they serve as valuable reminders of an ideal, albeit fictional, world.

Like most children, I loved fairy tales while growing up. It transported me to a world of wonder at a time when my own world was becoming too predictable. See your first sunrise, and it is mesmerising. See your second, and you want more. See your 20th sunrise, and you can’t wait to go inside to watch the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Repetition breeds boredom. I was ODing on my world, but fairyland was a whole different game. There, you could take nothing for granted. Gravity might not work, animals might belt nursery rhymes, trees might do a Shakira number, and pumpkins might turn into coachmen. 

The unpredictability of it was thrilling beyond words. Still, there were some certainties. For example, the happy ending. The prince had to fall in love with the princess, they had to share a ‘true love’s kiss’, the wicked stepmother or the evil witch had to be defeated, and everything had to turn out well. The princesses were usually young, beautiful, naïve and submissive. So, I can understand Anna Rogers’s perspective when she wrote her Substack article ‘How Disney Princesses Disempowered an Entire Generation of Women’. But bashing these princesses has become somewhat of a norm, so I would like to respectfully disagree. 

Rogers’s main problem with the princesses is that they are too submissive, set unachievable standards of beauty and are always in need of a prince to ‘rescue’ them. “We thought we were watching extraordinary women fall in love, but looking back, we were watching beautiful women earn their happy endings by silently enduring an unbelievable amount of s**t,” she writes. According to her, these princesses brainwashed young girls into wanting to look perfect (“young, thin, and had tiny waists, huge eyes and perfect hair, even after fleeing attempted murder through a forest”), fear ageing (most of the villains are older women), and need rescuing. 

To me, however, the appeal of these princesses was not in what they were but in what they made me feel. They called to something deep within me. In short, they were not creating desires in me; they were awakening ones that were already there. And unlike what Rogers seems to believe, most young girls are able to distinguish between fairy tale and reality soon enough in their lives. 

Rogers has issues with each of the Disney princesses. Snow White survived an attempted murder, found seven grown men living in filth and immediately started cooking and cleaning for them. Cinderella spent years being abused and used as unpaid labour in her own home, yet never became angry enough to make anyone uncomfortable. Belle gave up her freedom for her father and became the prisoner of a man who shouted at her, frightened her and controlled whether she could eat….

Sure, her article put a different spin on the princesses’ lives. Still, I think Rogers is missing the larger point of these fairy tales. Yes, Cinderella was too docile. But the moral of the story is not that you should be submissive. It is about the need in each of us for a just world. It fulfils a longing that every wrong we suffer will be righted in the end. That fairness is not a pipe dream. Of course, this is not the world we live in, but it is the world we long for. The fairy tales understand human nature; that is why they have such timeless appeal. 

Or take The Beauty and the Beast. Why should Belle have become the prisoner of a cruel man? More importantly, how could she have fallen in love with him? But does that not ultimately tell a beautiful story—of seeing beyond the superficial, of looking into a person’s soul, of perceiving the goodness underneath the disfigurement? Most of all, as someone once said, it tells the story of loving a person into beauty. Belle doesn’t end up loving the prince because he is handsome. She makes him handsome by loving him. 

Ultimately, Rogers wants to turn the Disney princesses into one of us—strong and ambitious, angry when they need to be, fighting for their rights, being their own saviours. She explores these concepts in her book, How Dare You? An Ex-Good Girl’s Guide to Breaking the Rules. Rogers lays out her roadmap for the princesses: Cinderella should stop waiting for her stepfamily to treat her better and leave. She should get her own place, make her own money and learn that she did not have to keep giving people access to her simply because they were family. Rapunzel should cut ties with the toxic Mother Gothel and begin the messy work of discovering who she was outside survival mode. Ariel should explore the human world without changing her body, leaving everything she knew and giving up her voice to become worthy of love. She could keep her voice, build a life of her own and make Eric have an actual conversation with her before declaring him her soulmate.

In short, these princesses should be translocated from fairyland into our world. Does Rogers realise how boring that would be? Turning them into ourselves would be the worst disservice we could do them. This, of course, does not mean that we have to turn ourselves into them. We just have them as portals into the world, not as it is but as it should be. Where our longings for peace, justice and forgiveness are met. Where bad is punished and good rewarded. Where there is wonder beyond war, joy beyond happiness, love beyond attraction. 

It is said that good girls go to heaven, while bad girls go everywhere else. If heaven looks anything like fairyland, count me in. 

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK. 

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