Why Disney princessses could not function in modern society

So to kick off this blog I'm going to start with a post discussing Disney princesses.  For a bit of historical context, the Disney Princess franchise has spawned many a halloween costume and identity crisis amongst girls of the 10 and under set in the United States, and it includes the following Disney characters:

Snow White
Cinderella
Aurora a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty
Ariel
Belle
Jasmine
Pocahontas
Mulan

There are also two franchise members that I am discounting, mainly because I haven't seen their respective movies (and because one was a CGI princess which just seems wrong, and the other has a romantic relationship with an amphibian, which seems still wronger).  These are Tiana - the frog princess - and Rapunzel. 

These animated characters have been idolized by little girls and gender-confused little boys the world over for generations, which I find very disturbing.  I hold this point of view mainly because trying to emulate any of these fictional ladies and supposed role models would be catastrophic for whosoever attempted such a thing.  They would face a number of problems which would preclude their seamless integration into modern society.


Problem number one that Disney princesses would face in modern culture:  People become concerned if you habitually talk to animals.

Yeah, the Disney princesses, one and all, talk to either animals or inanimate objects on a regular basis.  And it's not a "bad dog/good dog/who-wants-a-treat?" sort of exchange that's going on here.  In pretty much every situation, the female lead characters of the Disney animated feature length films grow up socially isolated, and their best friends are animals.  Animals that they talk to.  And in some cases, these animals talk back, which is even creepier.

In the older Disney movies, such as Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, the princesses talked to the animals and the only response was maybe some anthropomorphic chirping.  In Cinderella's case the animals talk and sing, but only the mice, and only when she's not around.  Then along comes the Little Mermaid and you have talking/singing/dancing birds, fish and crustaceans.  Jasmine spends all of her time with her pet tiger (undeniably cool, but also very odd).  Most of Belle's friends were enchanted appliances or cutlery/glassware. Pocahontas's best friends were animals, and her mentor was a talking tree.  Creepy all around.

Why is it that none of the Disney female leads have human friends?  Are we trying to teach kids that in order to be special you can't have any sort of healthy social interaction?  That success comes at the price of developing basic interpersonal communication skills?  Maybe it's just me, but this seems like a bad idea.  The only exception to this in the Disney Princess franchise is Mulan, who actually seems able to get along with other PEOPLE, not just her talking dragon and cricket-friend.


The second potentially problematic criterion for being a Disney princess: lack of any marketable skills.

You'd think that at least one of these fictional princesses would be spending her days learning about diplomacy or how to govern.  But nope, all they seem to be able to do reliably is sing.  That and whine about what's missing in their lives - which is usually a prince.  Often the whining is set to music, thus combining their two skill sets.  While, admittedly, Cinderella cleans floors like it's going out of style, she only does it up until she gets the fancy princess outfit and meets the prince.  Also, you never see any of the princesses being in any way productive or trying to further their education (except Belle who apparently spends all her time reading fantasy fiction).  Kids are watching these movies!  Seems like the perfect opportunity to throw a little moral into the story.  Maybe something along the lines of hard work paying off, amidst all the adventuring.  Does there always have to be a genie or a prince or a not-very-well-explained magical spell swooping in to save the day?  The only one of the movies with a nice training montage/song is - wait for it… - Mulan.  Again.  She runs away and joins the army, thus actually acquiring some useful skills to achieve her goals.  Hard-core.



The third problem with Disney's princesses: all of their story's revolve around finding love, yet none of them seem to able have any sort of functional romantic relationships.

This might be because they all have dead moms, so they lacked any example of what a functional marriage/domestic partnership/etc. actually looks like.  Apparently the only female parental figure you are allowed to have as a Disney princess is an evil stepmother.  The ones with living dads in their lives have relatively positive relationships with them, but then they tend to spend the whole movie obsessing over the first (generally) age-appropriate male they come across, which doesn't seem even remotely healthy.

Ariel, for example, spends the majority of her movie stalking the very first man she ever sees who doesn't have a tail.  Aurora goes nuts over the prince after meeting him in the forest, presumably because he's the first person she's ever seen that isn't an old lady or a bunch of woodland creatures pretending to be a person.  Jasmine's introduction to her love interest involves following a random stranger and his pet monkey home to his isolated rooftop bedroom, which is definitely not a course of action that Disney should be promoting to young girls.  While he seems nice enough, or at least doesn't rape and murder her, she can't even seem to recognize him once he changes clothes, so you have to wonder about the validity of the 'true love' happening there.  Snow White's seven dwarves situation is not one that would translate well to the current idiom either.  Shades of polygamy.

Pocahontas, despite the native-american-Barbie body type she has going on the movie, was approximately twelve years old during the events portrayed.  Because of this, I think that the whole sexual tension vibe she had going with John Smith really could have been left out of the story.  Not cool, Disney.  Furthermore, an unsettling proportion of the Disney princesses have their first kiss while in a coma.  The only one of these women who doesn't "fall in love at first sight" - except Belle, who had a whole weird bestiality factor at play that I'm not going to get into - is once again, Mulan.  She is the only one who actually gets to know the male lead before having any sort of romantic interaction.

In conclusion, I find it sad that the only Disney princess who seems even moderately well-adjusted is the only one who is not actually a princess.  She is neither the daughter of a king/native american chieftain, nor does she at any point in her movie marry a prince or king.  Mulan is not a princess at all.  She is, in fact, a transvestite.  Who kicks Hun ass.