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| Special thanks to Kenny, Bethany, and Diana for the content. |
Disney princesses. Little girls try to dress like them and little boys think they’re gross. Teenage boys are creepily attracted to them. But some Disney princesses really aren’t princesses at all. They are mainly just peasants or wannabes in strange circumstances, circumstances that often lead to mental instability.
Belle is normal for about the first 20 seconds of Beauty and the Beast, but then the townspeople let you know she’s pretty much a loon. She reads a book to some sheep, talks to dishes, then falls for a hairy, talking bison/lion/gargoyle. It’s no wonder she’s crazy, look at her dad!
Mulan has a gender complex (also not a princess, and never becomes one either).
Ariel is almost a princess, but she is also a fish, which kind of disqualifies her.
Snow White is like 16, lives with 7 old tiny men, and kisses them all every night.
Cinderella commands an army of mice and has an abusive family. If the prince were to visit her home in the modern world, it would most likely be to arrest her for a triple homicide.
Rapunzel is great, but she just wouldn’t be able to function after years of solitary confinement, and her hair would have more junk living in it than David Bowie’s pants in The Labyrinth.
But there is one princess that stands above the rest as legitimate royalty. I will give you a hint—she has a PET TIGER. That’s right, Jasmine is our winner. Even if Aladdin is the “princess” type character in that movie, Jasmine is still widely considered a Disney princess, and rightly so. She lives in a palace, has a sweet blue pendant headband, and did I mention she has a PET TIGER! She isn’t sent away by an evil step mother, captured by a witch, or taken by some crazy old woman, she runs away because she wants to run away. Jasmine knows her subjects and is aware of their dire situations, tries to help them, and even falls in love with a “street rat”. She is witty, intelligent, wealthy, compassionate, and let’s admit, she is pretty sexy for an animated character.
Even though Jasmine is a great princess, she is an exception to the rule. Almost every other classic Disney princess (not including the Frog Prince girl because I never saw it) is not a princess at all, and you know what, I think that’s just fine. It’s so much cooler to see a strange, poor, eccentric, or even non-human creature succeed rather than a princess. Princesses are great, but who wants to see a princess’ life get any better than it already is? They’ve already got it all. So thanks Disney for letting little girls all over the world know that even if they’re a crazy, deranged, psychotic child, they can one day be considered a beautiful princess.
