Princesses Suck. Heroes Are Better

The Disney universe is huge, and it's mainly what we have our kids watch to pass the time and to know it’s safe content to fill their brains with. But is it really? I mean, what’s wrong with catchy songs, awesome animation, and an amazing variety of chill characters! But it's not so much what they appear to be, it's what characters do. Take Princess Ariel for example.

She’s a princess, a mermaid, and is beautiful. In the movie, she disobeys her father by sneaking out, falls in love with the first guy she sees, gives us this "I want" "I want" song, argues with her father, sneaks off again, causes this whole mess, and then in the end, STILL gets what she wants with no real consequence!

Now being a princess, most of our daughters wish to grow up girly rather than tomboyish, feeling pretty in their cute dresses; that’s fine. They're also attracted to the fact that mermaids are cool, only because humans enjoy watching and thinking about things that are fantasy and use it as an escape from reality, much like when people are attracted to superheroes.

Analyzing now where The Little Mermaid takes a turn, she’s always disobeying her father by sneaking out and not listening to his warnings. This is setting a bad example by showing our kids it's okay to not listen and sneak off because it will show you a cool new world! Well if ya haven’t noticed, did anyone see that shark scene? If our kids do the same thing in this day and age, especially with human trafficking being at higher rates than back then, they’ll only find themselves in places a parent would never want to find them.

Moving on to the love at first site. First off, this guy could be an axe murderer for all we no but she doesn’t care. She only sees his handsome face without even knowing what kind of a guy he is. If people ask me, "Do you believe in love at first sight?" I would say no. The eyes see lust and want and can easily cloud judgement. When they also say follow your heart, that’s also a no-no. The heart can be deceiving—follow your brain instead.

"Part of Your World": the gimmy gimmy song. “I want morrrreeee.” Now I know she’s probably singing more on discovery and is bored with the every day routine, but it doesn’t show how grateful she is for the things that she does have, and in the end she’s ready to throw and ditch her family away for a dude she only hung out with for at least three days. Three days! Imagine marrying a dude you only knew for three days! At least 90 Day Fiancé has a bit more time than that!

Now true, there was a battle scene where people got hurt, and she tried apologizing to her father WHEN it was too late but in the end, what was really the lesson? That life is boring, find an adventure and no matter what happens along the way you’ll still get what you want? Yeaaahhh no. Now I get it's just a cartoon. It's mainly to keep the kids quiet and what not but back then, long length movies were just being made and it's what we as adults had for entertainment, cartoon or not. Primarily, it was for all ages so no, it's not just for the kids.

When you look at other Disney princesses, they all mainly run away to find something better, let a guy get in the way and have him be their main priority, and it shows that no matter what, there’s going to be a happily forever after. This is one of the reasons why I love Mulan, Tiana, Merida, Anna, and the gal from Enchanted, showing the real-life struggles of the real world and that reality hits hard. All of them have priorities first and even though a man shows up in their movies, they still focus on the job at hand that they started with. But as an all, I don’t want my daughters expecting to have everything handed to them and that by disobeying your parents, things will be fine. That brings me to one of the best universes on this entertainment industry… Marvel!

When you look at some of the best Marvel heroines such as Lady Sif, Black Widow, Agent Carter, Scarlet Witch, Daisy Johnson etc., they had life! Orders to follow, priorities that can be related to in real life for all of us, struggles, encouragement and even when a man showed up for some, they still focused on what really mattered rather than ditch everything to be with him. Change my mind.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to be girly or watch Disney movies. Just be careful who your kids look up to as a role model. Especially nowadays when we have people like Miley Cyrus and Nicki Minaj, I want my princesses to dress like warriors, not people that have nothing to do except find the weirdest clothes that pop their boobs and tongue out. At the end of the day, what would you hold? A sword or a glitter wand?