“Above all, a princess STRIVES for perfection.”
Being a Disney Princess is the ultimate fairy-tale dream.
“I would kiss a hundred frogs if I could marry a prince and be a princess!”
While princesses in the real world simply marry or are born into royal families,
in the wonderful world of Disney they come from a more abstract place
of magic, wish-fulfillment, and destiny.
[Whispers] “The ocean chose you.”
Across decades and her many iterations, this figure is united by some common traits.
“She’s nice, very nice!”
The Disney princess is virtuous and optimistic.
“I don’t see how a world that makes such wonderful things could be bad.”
A picture of innocence, she has a sunny disposition
and a strong sense of right and wrong.
“We have all come here with anger in our hearts,
but she comes with courage and understanding.”
It goes without saying that she's also elegant and beautiful,
with big and bright features.
“Let me see. Bright eyes, working nose, strong teeth.”
She wears opulent dresses to grand ceremonies,
but even in rags, she’s effortlessly stunning.
“Ya look great, kid, ya look sensational.”
EVERYONE is drawn to her— even animals.
“Hello. It’s always nice to make new friends.”
Naturally, people fall in love with her— including her handsome Prince Charming
[Singing] “The gleam in your eyes is so familiar.”
Because of this, she’s seen as too demure and delicate to fend for herself,
“Pocahontas can’t keep running off. It’s dangerous out there.”
and is frequently underestimated. “You don’t seem to know
how dangerous Agrabah can be.” “Hmm, I’m a fast learner.”
Over the years, modern Disney princesses
have become more and more outspoken, adventurous, and even rebellious.
“I’ve decided to do what’s right, and break tradition.”
Yet despite these advancements, our culture has also become
increasingly critical of the Disney Princess archetype—
and whether or not the very idea is sexist.
The term itself has taken on a negative connotation,
suggesting helplessness and entitlement.
“I didn't realize this place turned you into a f-[BLEEP]ing Disney princess.”
But is the Disney Princess ultimately a harmful fantasy—
or does it remain a crucial part of how many of us shape our imagination and identities?
Here’s our Take on why we can STILL dream of being a Disney Princess,
even if the meaning of that changes with the times,
and the importance of holding onto the happily-ever-after she represents.
“I never knew what I was capable of.”
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There have been princesses as long as there’s been royalty,
but the Disney Princess we’ve come to know and love
originated with classic fairy tales.
“Far-off places, daring sword fights,
magic spells.”
In stories like Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea,”
princesses were so delicate and pure, they could sense a single pea
beneath twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds.
“There seems to be something under the mattress.
I don’t mean to be so sensitive.”
Even more importantly, the princess of Andersen’s story
appears at first to be an ordinary girl, but there’s no mistaking
the princess she is inside.
“Never underestimate the power of a pure heart.”
This is crucial to the appeal of the Disney Princess,
who has long played a role in the process of children developing their identities—
particularly when it comes to gender expression.
“She’ll need a dress and a-“ “Oh no no not a she a he. He! He!”
“That does make a difference. HE’LL need a jacket”
In “Cinderella Ate My Daughter,” Peggy Orenstein discusses
how important Disney Princesses are for four-year-old girls in their inflexible stage—
“The precise moment that girls need to PROVE they are girls,
when they will latch on to the most exaggerated images
their culture offers.”
As Annie Murphy Paul writes in The New York Times,
“For a preschool girl, a Cinderella dress is nothing less
than an existential insurance policy, a crinolined bulwark
to fortify a still-shaky sense of identity.”
“Oh it’s a beautiful dress! Did you ever see such a beautiful dress?”
But even young boys are drawn to Disney Princesses—
and as a 2016 study found, boys who engaged with them
were found to be better behaved.
What’s more, these boys were found to be more generally androgynous,
rejecting hyper-masculinity in a way that proved beneficial in the long run.
“I lied to you. I am a boy.” “Why does it matter if he’s a boy?”
“He can be a princess if he wants to!”
The Disney Princess offers a model of femininity
that’s useful for all children to explore— although that hasn’t prevented
the criticism that she’s reductive, regressive, or even anti-feminist.
“And that he will carry me away to his castle, where we will live happily ever after.”
MUCH of that criticism stems from the earliest portrayals of the princess trope,
which often revolved around princesses who were not just demure—
but trapped.
“Cinderella was abused, humiliated,
and finally forced to become a servant in her own house.”
The “trapped princess” is often cruelly forced
into a life of isolation.
Whether she’s struck by a dangerous curse,
or simply living under an oppressive parent,
she longs to be freed,
[Singing] “Who’ll find me…”
—usually by the prince she dreams will come and rescue her.
[Singing] “For the one I love. To find me.”
Disney’s first full-length movie princess was 1937’s Snow White,
who is forced to work as a scullery maid by an evil stepmother
who resents her beauty.
“Hair black as ebony. Skin white as snow.”
“Snow White!”
The jealous Queen poisons Snow White, who falls into a deep slumber.
And she can only be liberated by a kiss from a handsome prince,
who then whisks Snow White away to his castle.
This basic formula would play out again in 1950’s Cinderella,
whose own evil stepmother also resents her beauty,
forces her into a life of servitude, and keeps her locked away.
“Oh no! Please. Oh, you can’t. You just can’t.”
Through more magical intervention, Cinderella’s prince finally comes,
and she too leaves her miserable life behind.
In 1959’s Sleeping Beauty, it’s an evil fairy, Maleficent,
who curses Aurora.
But she too is hidden away before being put into her own deep sleep—
again, until a handsome prince can save her.
“I just love happy endings.”
While all of these princesses thrive under incredible adversity,
their stories largely portray them as helpless victims,
robbing them of agency over their own lives.
Disney itself even poked fun at this in Wreck-It Ralph 2,
wryly suggesting that what REALLY makes a “princess”
isn’t beauty, magic, or talking to animals— but trauma.
“Were you poisoned?” “No.” “Cursed?” “No.”
“Kidnapped or enslaved?” “No!”
“Are you guys okay? [Whispers] Should I call the police?”
But while the trapped princess has been the subject of criticism,
ridicule, and even contempt over the years, this point of view
often overlooks her resilience.
“They can’t order me to stop dreaming.”
What’s more, the harsh conditions these princesses faced,
through no fault of their own, reflected the truths
of how women have been oppressed.
"Scrub the terrace. Sweep the halls and the stairs.
Clean the chimneys."
And throughout, the trapped princess remains loving and optimistic,
finding her liberation wherever she can.
“And yet, through it all, Cinderella remained ever gentle and kind.”
These are qualities that ANYONE should aspire to.
But beginning with 1989’s The Little Mermaid, we met a new kind of Disney Princess—
one who met her circumstances with a bit more daring.
"Ariel! Ariel, please, come back!"
The Little Mermaid’s Ariel has a lot of the same issues
as the traditional trapped princess: She’s kept on a tight leash
by an oppressive parent.
“As long as you live under my ocean, you’ll obey my rules!”
She’s cursed by a jealous witch, who strips away her power.
"What I want from you is... your voice!"
And while she doesn’t fall into a deep sleep, she’s still left unable
to speak for herself, waiting for yet another
handsome prince to rescue her.
“Gee you must’ve really been through something.
Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’ll help you.”
Yet Ariel also has a genuine personality. She’s rebellious, brave,
active and adventurous, full of curiosity and concrete desires.
“I wanna be where the people are.” Belle in 1991’s Beauty And The Beast
is also trapped—
but like with Ariel, this is due to her own choice--
a sacrifice she makes for someone she loves.
“Take me instead.”
Created by screenwriter Linda Woolverton to be an unmistakable feminist,
the headstrong Belle loves reading more than anything,
“It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting ideas and thinking.”
“Gaston, you are positively primeval”
and desires to be much more than just some handsome prince’s wife.
[Singing] “His little wife. No sir, not me.”
In the end, Belle DECIDES to be with the Beast,
and only because he sees her for who she is inside.
“I’ve never seen so many books in all my life!”
“You--you like it?” “It's wonderful.” “Then it's yours.”
Disney’s “princess with personality” became even more pronounced
with Aladdin’s Jasmine in 1992.
“How dare you? All of you. Standing around deciding my future?
I am not a prize to be won.”
Like her earlier predecessors, Jasmine is TRAPPED in her palace,
“I’ve never even been outside the palace walls.”
and by the rules of her station.
“People who tell you where to go and how to dress.
You’re not free to make your own choices.”
Yet Jasmine is also determined to control her own destiny.
“If I do marry, I want it to be for love.”
Her decision to fall in love with and marry a poor non-royal, Aladdin,
marks another symbolic turning point for the Disney princess—
one that would forever change the rules.
“From this day forth, the princess shall marry
whoever SHE deems worthy.”
Significantly, Jasmine was also the first non-white Disney princess,
and it’s notable that the princesses who followed were both increasingly diverse
and more outwardly independent, refusing to conform to ANY expectation.
"You said you'd trust Ping. Why is Mulan any different?"
Like Ariel, Belle, and Jasmine before her, Pocahontas doesn’t want to be told who to marry,
“Father, I think my dream is pointing me down another path.”
but it’s even MORE notable that she chooses to stay with her tribe
rather than leave with John Smith.
“Come with me?” “I’m needed here.”
The Princess and The Frog’s Tiana is hardworking and entirely self-reliant.
“This ‘stick-in-the-mud’ has had to work two jobs her whole life
while you've been suckin' on a silver spoon.”
And even when she gets her happily ever after of marrying a prince,
she STILL pursues her dream of opening her own restaurant.
As the Disney Princess became more free-spirited,
her story became even more overtly about how society TREATS women.
“She’s a hero.” “She’s a woman. She’ll never be worth ANYTHING.”
The notion that women are powerless or need to be protected
is what motivates Mulan to prove herself.
“Maybe what I really wanted was to prove I could do things right.
So when I looked in the mirror, I’d see someone worthwhile.”
These films marked a break with the traditional Disney Princess,
and the beginning of a more complex version of the trope—
one that aimed to subvert everything about it.
“I’m never going back.”
While radically different in their characterizations,
Disney’s more modern princess stories contain many motifs we’ve come to expect.
“We’re trapped.”
“No one goes beyond the reef!”
But they’re also explicitly about interrogating many of the trope’s more reductive
or outdated aspects.
“You can’t marry a man you just met.” “You can if it’s true love.”
“Anna, what do you know about true love?”
Most significantly, the Disney Princess is increasingly the HERO of her story,
in control of her own fate, answering her OWN call to adventure.
“What’s in there?”
“The answer to the question you keep asking yourself.
Who are you meant to be?”
She undertakes dangerous missions to save her people from danger,
and in the process, she learns what it means to be a leader.
“I vow to protect and defend the kingdom of Avalor as crowned princess.”
Because these contemporary princesses are so empowered,
they resist some of those more limiting princess stereotypes.
—and their films openly question them.
“I’ll be shooting for my OWN hand. Curse this dress!”
Romance is often just a subplot to their story—
if it’s even there at all.
In 2012’s Brave, the central relationship is between the tomboy-ish Merida
and Queen Elinor.
“Mum, it’s just my bow.” “A princess should not have weapons.”
In the end, Merida’s happily ever after doesn’t arrive with true love’s kiss,
but the self-discovery that allows her to reconnect with her mother.
“But I’ve been selfish, and I know now that I need
to amend my mistake. And mend our bond.”
Similarly, Disney’s Frozen hinges on the love between two sisters,
Anna and Elsa.
“Elsa, we were so close. We can be like that again.”
Anna’s love-at-first-sight with the handsome Prince Hans
evokes those tropes we’ve seen so many times before in Disney movies—
only to expose them for the fallacy they are.
“Oh, Anna. If only there was someone out there who loved you.”
And as in Brave, the curse is lifted and happiness restored by the two female relatives
rediscovering their true love for each other.
“You sacrificed yourself for me?” “I love you.”
“An act of true love will thaw a frozen heart!”
While Anna does still get a genuine love interest whose main role in the story
is just to support her,
“This is not about me!”
notably, Elsa doesn’t show any interest in love at all.
Her story is wholly about the personal progress of overcoming crippling fears
and learning to embrace her true self.
“Let it go, that perfect girl is gone.”
Today’s Disney Princesses are role models of empowerment,
far beyond what the term has traditionally meant.
“Our fate lives within us. You only have to be brave enough to see it.”
Even the 2019 live-action version of Aladdin updates Jasmine
to make her motivated not by love or boredom, but her desire to become
Agrabah’s first female Sultan.
“It’s not that I don’t want to marry, it’s just-” “You want to be sultan”
“I was born to do more than marry some useless prince.”
This self-conscious avoidance of the Disney Princess stereotype
has resulted in more complex stories about strong young women
discovering their individual identities— not unlike how WE use Disney Princesses,
when we’re first figuring out ourselves.
[Singing] “You know who you are.”
While the Disney Princess has become stronger and more multifaceted over the years,
her archetype is still viewed as fairly two-dimensional.
“Take these flowers to Nancy, please.”
“What are you, crazy? They're birds! They don't know where she lives.”
She’s still stereotyped as fragile, out of touch, and privileged:
After all, another interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s
“The Princess And The Pea” isn’t that princesses are inherently pure,
but fussy and spoiled.
“I just can't sleep here.”
In our flesh-and-blood world, what we regard as a princess
is the rich socialite familiar from so many reality shows,
living in a detached fantasy and looking down on everyone else.
“I’m starting a charity to help raise money for dwarves, because they need our help,
because they’re not real people.”
These negative feelings manifest in what could be seen
as the Disney Princess’s evil stepsister trope, the spoiled rich girl, who’s immature
and longs only for selfish, hedonistic pleasure.
[Singing] “I’m expensive sushi on a huge, huge yacht.
I’m a little bit single even when I’m not.”
Often we exorcise that animosity toward the princess by putting them
in fallen princess stories where they lose their status and fortune,
growing into a better person only by REJECTING their “princess” tendencies.
“To use this as an opportunity to become maybe hopefully
a better version of myself.”
But as much as the criticism of the Disney Princess archetype
is supposedly feminist,
there is an implicit sexism in looking down on a character
just for exhibiting girly qualities, and rooting for her only when she abandons them.
To compare Cinderella to Moana and reject one over the other
is inherently anti-feminist—
both have individual strengths that can be equally aspirational.
“For with each dawn, she found new hope that someday her dreams of happiness
would come true.”
"The ocean chose you for a reason."
And tempted as we might be to look at the Disney Princess franchise with cynicism,
the hope and empowerment that it provides to children—
and even adults— is indispensable.
Without the Disney Princess, life would feel noticeably more bleak.
She encourages us to approach each other with kindness,
to never stop dreaming, and to imagine a better world—
even in the darkness.
“I won’t stop. For every minute of the rest of my life,
I will fight."
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