In Defense Of Aurora. 

The main page has yet another Disney Princess article (why are there so many of those?), but his one has to do with each princess\' individual selling power/popularity on Ebay and the comments are full of Belle and Mulan, but where are my Sleeping Beauty fans at?

Who Is the Most Popular Disney Princess on eBay? Who Is the Most Popular Disney Princess on eBay? Who Is the Most Popular Disney Princess on eBay?

Not that Disney had ever dialed it back on the princess thing, but the recent mania surrounding… Read more Read more

I get that Belle loves to read and see the inner beauty in people. That\'s great! And her story deals with an urban setting initially and sort of the middle class (taking a break from the actual royal connections needed to be a princess, thus widening the term Disney Princess to be code for a special band of female protagonists). Yay, I guess. Also, she is a nonconformist (which is both awesome and really hard work) in her village. These are all good things, but boy does she have to be active in her own destiny and the same is true of Mulan.

Cognitively, I get that agency is important. I know that female characters need just as many chances to be in charge of their destinies as male characters do. Awesome. But, I was leading my own destiny in my teens and it was a frantically active and poorly planned sequence of events that I largely felt left on my own to do and roundly despondent over. In Belle\'s place (with a town against me, some gross dude pressuring me, and only my father to support me), I probably would have fought too, but with the ferocity that comes from not caring how things turned out. I would have gotten tired and I would have given up. Pragmatism and depression (or the sense of pragmatism granted through depression) don\'t make for an enduring can-do spirit.

No, at sixteen, I was tired of fighting for acceptance and living through books. Hence, for me, the one princess who truly embodies a fantasy is the princess who falls asleep just as her life is about to become completely overwhelming and wakes up to the things she wanted: the person she felt the first pangs of love for, a semi-settled future, and the planned rulership of people who seem to love her. The best part is that everyone else was asleep too so she didn\'t miss anything. As the last girl asleep whenever anyone else is around, this matters to me. Additionally, having been asleep largely abdicates her from accusations that she wasn\'t doing well enough taking care of her own life. People can\'t accuse you of shirking your dragon killing when you are in a spindle induced sleep of ages.

Did you know that "Aurora speaks less than any lead character in a Disney cartoon feature except the silent Dumbo? She has only about 18 lines of dialogue and doesn\'t speak even after she\'s awakened from her magical slumber." Quiet girls need princesses too!

\'Sleeping Beauty\': 25 Things You Didn\'t Know About the Disney Classic \'Sleeping Beauty\': 25 Things You Didn\'t Know About the Disney Classic \'Sleeping Beauty\': 25 Things You Didn\'

Disney / Everett CollectionWith anticipation building for Angelina Jolie\'s Read more Read more

I know that a lot of people were more emotionally grounded teens and they wanted to be a Belle or a Mulan. I admire that. I suspect these are people whose zombie apocalypse plan is something they give real thought to, while I will only concede (after hours outlining how inane the very concept is) that I would likely just kill myself. I can\'t really see entering into the spirit of the discussion when the discussion is about the downfall of the world and my life becoming a day to day struggle not to get eaten by infected people. That spirit seems icky, so I think I entered into it enough.

And, just to round this silly thought/post out:

is the best princess film because it has the best villain; it was the last hand inked Disney film before xerography; it was the first animated feature to be filmed in the wide-screen 70MM Technirama format (not until Frozen was this repeated); the medieval landscape is gorgeous and innovative; Tchaikovsky.

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