Friday, December 11, 2009

Once Upon a Time...Happily Ever After



I blame Disney! Its all Disney's fault, all the disillisuioned fantasies I have about love and romance was forced on my by the Disney Corp. They continue to perpetrate this fantasy to girls around the world year after year, and one day a little girl is going to grow up and come to the harsh realization that there is no Prince Charming coming to rescue her on his white horse and whisk her away to live happily ever after. That doesn't happen! (no comments from the 1 in a BILLION who do get whisked away...please and thank-you..lol.)

Disney romanticizes relationships and everything is all fluffy and blurry and blissfull. There is the handsome prince you fall helplessly in love with, and you only get the prince if you're pretty and in distress; there is no emotional connection whatsoever. But you get married and live happily ever after?! We buy into it, as is evident my the women who go in search every year for the ball gown wedding dresses, the men who propose to women in horse drawn carriages, and the girls who wish for it all.

All of the fairy tales neglect to portray the hardships of relationships, *pause* they don't even show relationships, they show the courtship, and straight from courtship is marriage. (hmmm maybe they are on to something...lol). Disney makes girls believe all you have to do is be pretty, helpless, and a handsome prince will find you. They forget to tell us that usually this handsome prince had found quite a few damsels and being in such 'high demand' decides to get a few more notches on his belt before he considers marriage. But he'll ride in and appear to whisk you away, and whisk he does, only to drop you off a few miles down the path to help another damsel onto his horse.

With Disney conforming to the times, now we have an African American princess *woot woot* (still perpetrating a fraud and happy endings..grrrr, but I mean c'mon, I can still be happy..lol.) I am waiting for the day when disney will have a fairy tale of a divorced single mom, and why can't she live happily ever after, or even a fairy tale of a single career-driven woman who also lives happily ever after. We need more realistic fairy tales. And maybe they don't need to live happily ever after, maybe they coninue to struggle everyday with their own issues but they live, with or without the prince.

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