If you’ve ever had a conversation with me, you can wager that at some point, I will share something about Disney. Most parents with little kids have frequent opportunities to share Disney experiences with their children, especially if those parents grew up on Disney like me.
However, there is so much more to Disney than just fantastic script writing and magnificent musical renditions. There is a reason the Mouse took the world by storm and evoked a feeling of magic within the hearts of millions.
In this post, I will focus on a specific movement of Disney, namely the Princesses. My future blog posts will explore each princess in a critique: her strengths and weaknesses, what makes her a positive or negative role model for girls, and what we can learn from her.
But for this first post, I’ll be exploring the reasons why I love the Disney princess culture as an individual and more importantly…as a parent!
- Disney Princesses Symbolize the Princess in Every Girl. As a Jesus follower, I recognize that I am a daughter of the King of Kings. Adopted into this royal family grants me intrinsic worth. I am priceless and valuable and beautiful – even when I have my pre-ball Cinderella days of chore-swamped drudgery and wearing rags – ahem -mommy sweatpants.
- Princesses Are Positive Role Models. While there is much controversy over whether or not Disney produces positive role models, as a lifelong Disney follower and an author obsessed over character analyses, I can guarantee there are countless positive examples of Disney Princesses. What I also love is how we can learn from the less than positive examples. I have used both positive and negative in teaching my five year old.
- Princesses Encourage My Child’s Imagination. My daughter is a storyteller. Growing up with princesses has launched her imagination into overdrive. She’s assigned special glittery names to each of her stuffed animals and like the princess worlds she’s grown up with, her stuffed animals come alive in her own imagination and travel to magical worlds beyond this one and have all sorts of adventures. And each adventure ends with either my daughter or some magical entity saving the day.
- Good vs Evil. Picking up on the “saving the day”, Disney, albeit unknowingly, offers everyone a glimpse of the ultimate hero, Jesus Christ. Revelation describes Jesus as the boy who defeated the dragon and saved the woman. Fairy tales with archetypes of heroes and princesses and villains hearken to the greatest hero love story of all. Disney’s happily ever after rouses a desire deep in our hearts. That desire is ultimately a God-given yearning for the greatest hero of all.
- Lessons in Life. Even viewing the worst princess role model, one can still find parts of her character or her film that offer a lesson. There are so many to choose from whether friendship, loyalty, sacrifice, courage, contentment, hard work, and more. These inspire my little princess and give her a compass point, along with Jesus, of how she can interact and do unto others.
- Princesses Honor Girlhood. My final reason points back to my first. At the heart of a girl’s inner psyche is a longing to feel loved and beautiful, to be treated as priceless. In a culture that both displays and grooms girls to be sexual objects, we need alternate messages more than ever which respect girls. To honor them as intelligent, special, worthy, and what I love about the more modern films: human! While the culture will try to bombard my daughter with its negative messages, I love how I can give her the positive princess examples that point back to Christ.
Just recently, the show Sofia the First came to an end. Even though this was not my daughter’s first princess doll, it was the very first princess she and I watched together. Cuddling up on the couch and watching the finale was one of the most poignant memories I will always have with my little girl. Even though she’s growing up more and more every day, I hope my daughter and future daughters can always share the princesses and all that comes with them for the rest of our lives.