leia131 | In Defense of Disney Part 2 (Reply)

Character: Cinderella, from Cinderella (1950)

Criticism: “She is saved from terrible living conditions by a prince. He does this, not because she’s such a hard worker, but because she’s beautiful.”

I’ve already gone over how condemning abuse victims for not escaping their abuse is wrong when I talked about Snow White (here), and the same thing applies to Cinderella. Additionally, she had friends in the house, who I’m relatively certain she wouldn’t want to leave to the tender mercies of her step family. Sure, she could have taken the mice, and the birds would probably have been all right without her, but the horse and Bruno (the dog) probably would have been beaten and/or starved without her there. Especially Bruno, since he was at odds with Lucifer.

And again, Cinderella didn’t have a lot of options. She was probably mostly uneducated (can you imagine Lady Tremaine letting her go to school?) and she didn’t have any money or decent possessions to her name, no human friends to take her in, and nowhere to go. She could have run away to… where, exactly? And leaving would likely have put her at risk of rape, murder, etc. because striking out on your own as a woman in that era was just not done. Say what you want about that, but it was true. Cinderella didn’t live in 2012, and she did the best she could. At least she had a house, and some food, and nobody was raping her or killing her to sell her vital organs on the black market. (Not that that means she should have just stayed there and thanked God she wasn’t worse off, I’m just saying these thoughts probably occurred to her when/if she contemplated running away).

Something I didn’t mention with Snow White, but that is true of both of these girls, is also that they never let their stepmothers win. Cinderella and Snow were both relentlessly cheerful, dreaming and wishing and hoping, even though they could see no real way out of their incredibly crappy lives. That takes a lot of strength, maybe even more so than escaping, because it would surely have been a lot easier to just lay down and die, give up and be miserable. But they don’t; they keep on going because they dream of a better life (yes, usually including a prince) that they hope they can attain someday.

And then we come to ‘the prince only saves her because she’s pretty’. You can make a stronger argument for this being true in Cindy’s case, as she doesn’t meet the prince before the ball, but I ask: is he drawn to her because she’s pretty, or because she’s his match? Maybe she’s so drop dead gorgeous to him because he sees something in her. (Do I love you because you’re beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?) Yes, the King and the Duke think she’s quite pretty too, and she is, but I’m sure there’s more to the prince’s deal than that. Otherwise, all the men would have been all over her, and he’s the only one who’s so totally spellbound. This is because it’s a fairy tale, they’re the magical love, and nothing, not her poverty, nor her stepfamily, nor her fleeing at midnight, can keep them apart.

And saying that she was a hard worker is… I don’t even know. I mean, yeah, it’s true, but not because she chose to be. She had to work hard, or get beaten (probably, it’s Disney, so we don’t actually see this happening, but it seems likely) so it’s not a positive personality trait so much as a survival trait. Also, how, exactly, would the prince have known she was a hard worker? If you’re arguing for them getting to know each other better before they get married, all right, but SAY THAT.

Lastly, saying that the prince saved her ‘not because she’s such a hard worker, but because she’s beautiful’ implies that it would have been preferable for him to save her because she was a hard worker, which is just stupid. Not only is it stupid because of what I said above about her work being for survival’s sake, it’s also stupid because it reads as equally sexist (marrying her so she can do work for you is better than marrying her because she’s pretty? What?) And it’s stupid because he’s a prince who surely has servants to do that hard work for them. (Maybe it’s supposed to translate to working hard at love? Or sex? Or princessing?) Also, really, it doesn’t matter what she looks like, or how hard she works: they get married because it’s a fairy tale, and they were meant for each other. In conclusion: Love.