The Marquette Journal

When Nicci Williams was young, she wanted to be Jasmine, the princess from “Aladdin.”

“She was ballsier than the other princesses. She wasn’t innocent. She snapped back at people,” Williams said. “She was like me. She wasn’t passive or pale or calm.”

Williams, a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences, said she was a “girly girl” as a child, dressing in frilly dresses and Belle-patterned pants with matching decal sweatshirts.

“I wanted to be a princess in general my entire childhood,” she said.

So did Ellie Kemmeter, a junior in the College of Communication, who looked up to Cinderella.

“She had blonde hair, and my favorite color was blue. She had the whole rags to riches, and I thought that would happen to me,” Kemmeter said. “I wanted to be a princess.”

Disney impacted many girls who watched its fanciful movies, convincing viewers that, as Cinderella sings, “Every girl can be a princess.”

Disney tapped into watchers’ fantasies, whisking girls away into a glittering snow globe of rubies, gold dresses, handsome princes, pumpkin coaches, fairy godmothers and overweight mice who could talk (“Gus, Gus!”). A world where dreams, most importantly of Prince Charming, could come true if you only believed (Do I sound like I’m singing yet?).

Cassandra Duckert, a sophomore in the College of Health Sciences, said Disney’s transformative nature was its appeal.

“Disney made you believe anything could happen,” she said. “And if you’re an everyday person, you could become something special if you work, or something happens.”

But did Disney’s fairy-godmother-like presence in girls’ lives instill too high of hopes? That Prince Charming would appear at the end of your troubles if only you just peered into a wishing well?

Ana Garner, a professor in the College of Communication, said the fairy tales and stories show our cultural expectations that the prince on a white horse will save the damsel in distress, as in the Disney movies.

“Happiness is achieved by getting some man to fall in love with her, then her life is complete,” Garner said. “I would be surprised if in their subconscious, girls still aren’t thinking about those same kind of things.”

Although the Disney princesses grew more independent throughout the century, they still achieved “happily ever after” through a man.

The princesses have reflected our cultural standards throughout time, from the “fairest of them all,” Snow White, to the newest black Disney princess, Tiana, a waitress from 1920s New Orleans with a jazz-playing alligator as a sidekick, who stars in “Princess and the Frog,” to be released Dec. 11.

Disney’s intense effect on viewers (the company expects $4 billion in revenue for 2009) affected girls’ perception of love, gender roles and race, consciously or not, from Snow White to Tiana.

Snow White, Cinderella and the narcoleptic blonde

“Those of Walt Disney seem barely alive. In fact, two of them hardly manage to stay awake,” said writer Kay Stone in “Understanding Disney.”

Disney’s early princesses pave the way for passive princesses. They wait for the prince, look pretty, sleep, talk with animals and sing. Only a man’s kiss literally brings them back to life.

Snow White was the “one who started it all.” Disney’s first princess, spawned in 1937, was modeled after the pin-up girls and silent movie actresses of the ’30s, wrote Elizabeth Bell in “From Mouse to Mermaid.”

She was “the fairest of them all,” reinforced by her name, Snow White: fair-skinned, blue-eyed, slender, docile and happy to sweep the floor of the seven dwarf’s cottage, as blue jays and deer tapped on the window.

Walt Disney described her as “a kind, simple little girl who believed in wishing and waiting for her prince charming to come along.”

Ashley Dobner, a junior in the College of Business Administration, said when she was 7 years old, she asked her mom why Snow White couldn’t get up on her own.

“I always wondered why she needed someone to kiss her to wake up,” Dobner said. “If it’s that simple, why not get up?”

Cinderella followed the same trend. She happily scrubs the floor, not changing her life. As soon as she loses hope, a plump, matronly fairy godmother arrives to give her a sparkling blue dress and a fancy updo (Cinderella was modeled after Grace Kelly, wrote Bell).

If only Mrs. Doubtfire godmothers could save us all.

She reinforces Disney’s philosophy that if you keep believing, your dreams will come true, according to Mark Pinsky, author of “The Gospel According to Disney.” But what does that mean for girls? Women can’t throw a penny into a fountain, hoping Robert Pattinson will bite them or they’ll land a job at Vanity Fair (Maybe those are just my dreams).

Of course, Cinderella was magical to watch. And generations of girls loved her.

Duckert said she liked Cinderella the best because she went from a maiden to a princess who married a prince.

“Because that’s the ultimate, you get the prince,” Duckert said.

Duckert said she relates to Disney’s happily ever after, because she plans to get married and have children. However, Duckert said that’s what she was raised to want in the small town of Waterloo, Wis., and realizes that’s not for everyone.

“It gives you the feeling that a guy should rescue you, but sometimes, you have to rescue yourself,” she said.

However, Cinderella was one of the stories given to the syndrome of “intellectual women who passively wait … for Prince Charming,” Pinsky wrote in “The Gospel According to Disney.”

Molly Moran, a sophomore in the College of Communication, half-jokingly said she blames Disney for corrupting girls.

“It’s not realistic. It’s dependency. Life is happily ever after when you end up with a prince, but you can be happy by yourself,” Moran said.

“Sleeping Beauty’s” princess Aurora, modeled after Barbie, was possibly one of the most ideal, “beautiful” princesses. Her first gift was even beauty.

She too is happy cleaning and singing to swallows, isolated from the rest of the world in a cabin in the woods with three feisty fairies, a situation similar to Snow White’s.

But she just can hardly stay awake, and has little to say until “an act of necrophilia makes that relationship consummated,” said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University.

After she lies down, the prince wakes her up. The ultimate rescue fantasy. All she has to do is lie down and a prince is at her side.

Plucky princesses

With the advent of ‘80s teen princess Ariel, the Little Mermaid (Alyssa Milano, star of popular ’80s TV show “Who’s the Boss?”, modeled for the character), Disney princesses got a bit more i-n-d-e-p-e-n-d-e-n-t.

Thompson said, “Disney princesses made after 1980, these women were very likely watching Oprah during the day, and that all seeped in.”

Little Mermaid swims up to the surface, which was highly forbidden in her “under the sea” community. Belle, a bookworm, saves the repulsive beast from himself. Jasmine stands up to the evil Jafar. Pocahontas gives up love in the end for more woods prancing. And Mulan even dresses up as a man to save her family’s honor. These princesses also took on different shades, appealing to a wider range of girls.

Williams liked Jasmine because she looked like her.

“I think it was her color was close to mine, not just how she acted. It was just that she was closer,” she said.

Dobner preferred Mulan. Dobner, a self-proclaimed tomboy, did not identify with Disney princesses when she was young. She said they were just pretty faces. Dobner even refused to dress up as Cinderella for Halloween like her mom wanted, choosing a blue Power Ranger costume instead.

But she did like Mulan for her tenacity and the balance of her feminine and masculine side.

“She didn’t run from bad things. She kicked ass. She beat people up, but she was good about it,” Dobner said. “I also like, being a tomboy, she was a tomboy, but still feminine.”

Still, the princesses lived in male-dominated worlds, where a man fulfills her life and ends the movie.

The townspeople in “Beauty and the Beast” stare at Belle in bewilderment when she prances through town with her nose in a book.

Gaston even says, “It’s not right for a woman to read. Soon she’ll get ideas, thinking.”

Belle is also still defined by her beauty, Thompson said. Even her name means “beautiful.” And she’s expected to look past the beast and see true love on the inside, while the beast is not.

“She’s expected to overlook the fact that this guy is highly undesirable, to the point that he has tusks,” Thompson said.

And Pocahontas, while she knows the woods better than clumsy John Smith, still wonders “What’s around the river bend?” and has to get swept off her feet.

“She doesn’t get into a dug-out canoe and roll across the Atlantic,” Thompson said. Disney makes the prince come to her.

The perfect life

All of the Disney princesses have wide implications for girls. They’ve made every girl want a princess wedding (when Princess Diana wore her silk taffeta wedding dress, she was compared to Cinderella and fairy tales over and over, Thompson said). And Thompson said the word “princess” is used constantly on all romantic realty shows, such as “Joe Millionaire,” “The Bachelor” and “Average Joe.”

“If one turned that into a drinking game and took a shot every time they heard ‘princess,’ you’d constantly be hammered,” he said.

And Disney has raised expectations for girls, making them think perfection is attainable.

Still, most girls said they aren’t biting.

Lauren Stolz, a sophomore in the College of Communication, who has four Disney folders and grew up playing with crowns and wands, said girls today have a more realistic view.

“Everybody wants their Prince Charming, but it’s not what they’re focused on,” Stolz said. “I don’t know when you realize that. Maybe the first time you get your heart broken.”

Kirsten DeGuzman, a sophomore in the College of Health Sciences, said she thinks about this idea a lot. DeGuzman said she grew up on Disney.

She had princess Barbie dolls, slippers and music boxes. Every Christmas, DeGuzman’s mom gives her a princess-themed present. Her first was a box of Pez covered with the faces of Disney princesses. Her senior year of high school, she received a pink aluminum lunchbox with Aurora, Snow White, Belle and Jasmine on the front. She’s even thinking of running the Disney princess half-marathon in March.

“I’ll probably be the one running with a tiara,” she said.

Still, even though DeGuzman grew up loving princesses, she said she thinks in reality. She said it would be great to have that “perfectly ever after, but that means I’d have to wait for someone to do it for me, versus me doing it for myself and being the strong person I know I am.”

Trent Carlson, a sophomore in the College of Business Administration, said he has seen all of the Disney princess movies and has noticed how the guy always saves the girl.

“Maybe it’s time the girl goes after the man,” Carlson said. “Or they focus more on the princes.”

Disney impacted girls in a way that perhaps no other media has. If nothing else, Disney allowed girls to feel pretty, to live in a dream world of royalty and ball gowns, to wish and to think big.

A chance, as Duckert said, “For an everyday girl to become something special.”

Tags: ariel, cinderella, Disney, life, little mermaid, love, princess, princess & the frog, sleeping beauty, snow white, tiana

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