Entertain me: Cinderella

It was me and three friends from my dorm, and about 50 four to eight year old little girls in blue dresses with their moms. So naturally, I felt nostalgic as the Disney logo gleamed across the screen and my friend and I laughed about how we always thought the D in Disney was a messed up G.

I sat nestled into the fuzzy movie theater seat, illicit candy, chips and an energy drink stashed in my obnoxiously large purse.

As the movie began, I became more and more conflicted. 7-year-old Lydia loved Cinderella – she was my favorite. And yet 21-year-old Lydia was not so fond of this one-dimensional, inhumanly thin blonde with a narrow-minded, patriarchal goal of finding happiness through a man.

Feminist critiques began boiling as I watched Cinderella repeatedly equate finding a man to finding safety, security and happiness. I mean, she was only ever happy when she had a man in her life: Her father or her Prince. And every conflict in the story centered around women fighting each other, competing against each other, or being just plain mean.

So what kind of message does that send to little girls?

Was the little girl behind me aware of the subliminal messaging her developing brain was receiving? Did she realize that movies like this would make her feel insecure and hate her beautiful round face and pudgy belly?

Did she realize that movies like this would pressure her to find a boyfriend, and cause her to think less of herself when she couldn’t/didn’t want to be with a guy? Did she realize that movies like this set up untrue expectations about the way women behave toward each other; that movies like this might perpetuate relationships in which girls are mean to her?

Romantic movies can exist without perpetuating these problematic elements I pointed out – it’s just that most people haven’t tried to make them yet. I look forward to a day when the glass slipper fits, the prince is flawed, relationships are real and complicated and the women want more than just men.