My daughter is 3. She’s obsessed with Disney princesses.
I’ve been a bit concerned on how she’s being imprinted as a future woman. My wife and I have been having ongoing discussions on which princesses are the best role models for her.1
The heroes/heroines we identify with, especially in childhood, largely determine our implicit morality—How we unconsciously aspire to behave. Our ideal. Our underlying life strategy.
Each Disney princess reflects a Feminine Ideal—how the culture of the day tells women to behave. Especially when it comes to relationships.
I summarized the shift into 3 different Feminine Ideals.
If you’re a woman who grew up watching Disney, you may find it interesting to see which of these “types” you identified with most, and how it shaped your view of relationships.
If you’re a man who dates women, you’ll find it useful to see which type you’ve been drawn to, and what it may say about how you assume women “should be” which of course would affect your relationships.
The Trusting Ingenue
The first Disney princess type, which is also common to the fairy tales and folklore, is an innocent woman who continues to trust life no matter what is thrown at her.
Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959) all fit this bill.
They don’t even drive their own stories. Life happens to them:
Snow White’s evil stepmother wants her killed for being the fairest. The kind huntsman (in original tale) and seven dwarves help her survive. She’s saved from the poison apple by the Prince’s kiss.
Cinderella’s evil stepmother2 forces her into servitude. Her ugly stepsisters are jealous of her beauty. She is helped by her fairy godmother, loses her glass slipper, and is rescued by the Prince.
Aurora from Sleeping Beauty is cursed by an evil fairy to sleep for one hundred years till she is woken by a Prince’s kiss.
In all cases, our heroine is persecuted by a jealous older woman and sometimes jealous ugly peers.3 She is helped by magical beings. Then ultimately saved by her true love.
These women are also orphans. It’s not a coincidence. Many heroes are orphans because it forces them to take on life and go on an adventure on their own.
Feminists hate these early princesses because they seem to suggest female helplessness and dependence on others.
But this misses the deeper moral displayed by these type of heroine:
She never loses faith.
No matter what terrible things happen to her, she doesn’t get jaded. She doesn’t close off. She doesn’t go into “protection mechanisms.”
She continues to believe in love and trust life.
She doesn’t hate men, or society, or the patriarchy.
Surrender is the ingenue’s superpower.
And by staying opening, loving and trusting, good fortune eventually comes to her.4
Historically, this was the best strategy for young women who could not overpower men, especially in a lawless pre-civilization time.
Therefore it developed into a moral template for how to approach love and relationships:
Being open and trusting incentivizes men to care for you.
As a dad, I like the idea of my little girl staying innocent. But I also don’t want her entering the dating world vulnerable in a way that she can be taken advantage of.
Any moral strategy can backfire.
Feminists have a point that blind faith and helplessness has put many women in terrible oppressive situations.
But the deeper principle is that hardening doesn’t work.
If any of these princesses were to become fearful, distrusting, or put up walls, they would died lonely.
Healthy relationships require mutual openness. And as much as women or the “feminine” side of the relationship leads the emotional tone, we can see why this moral strategy was embedded into mythology.
But at some point in modern history, our culture decided this was no longer a good prescription for women...
The Rebellious Agent of Love
While 2nd Wave Feminism pushed for sexual equality and rebellion against the patriarchy,5 the Trusting Ingenue developed teeth…
Ariel of The Little Mermaid (1989), Belle of Beauty and the Beast (1991), Jasmine of Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995), show a new level of adventurousness and rebellion.
Ariel wants legs to pursue the human prince. She’s willing to get into some trouble to do so.
Belle resists the societal expectation to be a “good little wife” for Gaston. She boldly switches places with her father as the Beast’s prisoner.
Jasmine desires to see the “whole new world.” She rebels with the street urchin.
Pocahontas makes contact with the evil white men against her father’s wishes.
Interestingly, this wave of movies marked the beginning of the Hero’s Journey/Monomyth framework in Disney.
In 1985, Christopher Vogler, a Disney story analyst, wrote a seven-page memo titled “A Practical Guide to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” This memo was distributed within Disney and became a standard for structuring manuscripts by the time The Little Mermaid came out in 1989.
Unlike the previous generation, these heroines do have unique desires. They do move their stories forward on their own will.
Actually, they all rebel against their fathers. In these stories, the father represents the Status Quo, but also the ineptitudes of male culture.
Ariel and Pocahontas have a strong, loving, but “backwards” father. These girls teach their fathers to be more open-minded and get with the times.
Belle and Jasmine have incompetent, weak fathers. They mean well, but their are fools.— In the 90’s we saw rise of the “bumbling oaf dad” trope.
In all cases, the heroine shows that she knows better than dad.
Still, she has no mother though. As before, if she had a living mother, she wouldn’t have to go on the psychological journey of “finding herself” as a woman.
I call this one The Rebellious Agent of Love because what drives her story forward is her passion for love at all costs.
She will do anything for love.
Love is the Rebellious Agent’s superpower.
It moves her story forward. In all stories, it’s still men who do the heavy lifting.
Ariel’s love inspires her man to kill Ursula and save her father. Belle literally loves the Beast back into prince form. Pocahontas reminds both war parties to just get along.
This reveals the implicit life strategy:
If you love men, they will act right and fight your battles for you.
Feminist don’t love it because there’s still a necessary man in the picture.
But unlike the helpless ingenue, the Rebellious Agent of Love has a very active role in her story.
It shows the superpower that women have and have always had:
A woman can love a man into greatness.
Though I don’t love the message of rebelling against your father (of course). I do find this trope to be close to a healthy medium.
(My wife concurred in our ongoing discussion.)6
But again, as any life strategy it can go wrong.
Maybe women have ended up in lackluster relationships by “falling in love with potential” that never comes. She ends up mothering her man-child, wishing for him to take the lead as a prince.
Such a woman may feel she can’t count on a man to rise up. Which leads to the last trope…
The Asexual Heroine
Mulan (1998) was perhaps the pre-cursor to this trope, but not it exactly. (Mulan literally proves she can do what men do, but she still falls in love at the end.)
Moana is the epitome of this trope. She rebels against her father (similar to Pocahontas), but rather than saving the world with love, she saves the same way any man would—with action.
Feminists like this version because finally you have a heroine who can do it all on her own.
But ironically, it’s because she’s following a male psychodrama.
The Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth (“Hero’s Journey”) was based on a male mental model. It’s the mythological prescription for self-actualization for a young man.
Campbell himself said that women don’t need to go on a hero’s journey. They are already there, united in the unconscious. (Or in some versions, they are part of the prize of the hero’s self-actualization.)
The message here is: You can do what men do. You can do it better. Therefore you don’t need a man at all.
As a dad, I can see the value of the first part of this message. I want my daughter to feel she can do anything regardless of gender assumptions.
But I haven’t seen this a useful message as far as having healthy relationships.
Women who adopt this often end up alone in their 40’s. There’s no room for man. (At least not one who will be your hero.)
Conclusion
From a macro-level, we can see the princesses have “hardened” over time. It reflects the masculinization of women (as part of androgynization of society).
While there is a logical survival incentive to teach women to harden/masculinize, it’s not good for relationships. We evolved to be polarized because that’s how we make life together.
That said, my wife and I concluded that the “Rebellious Agent” is likely the happiest medium. She thinks for herself. She acts on her will. But she retains her femininity. (And isn’t afraid to fall in love.)
Which may mean I’ll be looking at an Aladdin/Beast as a future son-in-law. Check back in 20-30 years…
Agree? Disagree? I want to hear your thoughts.
We have a long debate in this recent podcast episode: Belle vs. Moana
We also discuss other elements such as how Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth doesn’t fit female psychology.
Mythological heroes and heroines are often either orphans or have lost their same-sex parent. The reason is if their benevolent same-sex role model was around, they wouldn’t have to become the protagonist of their story—Mom would be there to protect and guide them.
The jealousy of older and uglier women in fairy tales reflects the cultural assumption that women are catty and can’t trust each other. I can’t say which way the causality goes though: Are women “catty” because of the culture, or does the culture reflect the innate nature of female-female competition?
I won’t comment on my thoughts on the “Law of Attraction” here, but I do believe this is why women are more drawn to it—Trusting and gratitude are survival strategies wired into the feminine unconscious.
Though I don’t agree with their conclusions, I do agree with the feminist assessment that we live in a patriarchy—Society is built on male value assumptions. Ironically, feminism also runs on those assumptions.
Listen to the episode here on substack
https://ruwando.substack.com/p/belle-vs-moana-whos-the-better-role
Also on Youtube, Spotify, Apple, and all other podcast apps.
Correction: Sleeping Beauty does actually have parents