When I was six years old, I could recite every word of Sleeping Beauty from memory. At the height of my obsession, I watched it nearly every day. I knew exactly how the evil Maleficent would cast an unjustified spell on Aurora’s kingdom, how she would fall into a deep slumber upon the prick of her finger on a spinning wheel, and how Prince Charming would finally come rushing to her rescue. Although the 1957 movie is the retelling of a story that has been told for centuries, first in the 1300s and again in the 1600s before the famous Brothers Grimm rendition which gave rise to the animated film, Sleeping Beauty (1957) is especially influential for young girls. I know I was not alone in my love of Disney princesses, especially Aurora, but when I remember my favorite childhood movie now, I recognize the the complex gender roles, implicit rape, and explicit misogyny laced throughout the movie. Sleeping Beauty is a favorite among young girls but, the movie is outdated and perpetuates gender stereotypes in the modern day by modeling women as passive homemakers, perpetuating rape culture, and creating conflict for women who do not conform to outdated ideals of femininity.
The Golden Age of Disney is generally considered as the period before Walt Disney’s death and the second wave of feminism (Hu 1). The second wave of feminism marked a decided change from previous notions of feminism centered on suffrage and instead focused on female liberation in the workforce (Malinowska 3). The formula for nearly all Golden Age Disney Movies is simple: A docile young princess who leads an ideal life is cursed by an evil witch. Only a brave and dashing prince can save the princess! The princess is saved, and they all live happily ever after. Sleeping Beauty is no different. Women in Sleeping Beauty are portrayed as passive homemakers, instead of assertive independent women, creating an unrealistic role model for young girls to look up to. As the title suggests, Princess Aurora is valued because she is beautiful. Throughout the entire movie, Aurora has only eighteen lines, which ties her worth directly to her appearance instead of her intellect (Giese). When she falls into her slumber, her lips are rosy and she holds a rose, making her a picture of purity and desirability. Prince Charming wakes her up because he is struck by her profound beauty, or in other words, she is saved because of her beauty. Even in the idealistic utopia of Sleeping Beauty women are valued first for their looks and second for their ideas. And, based on their superficial desirability, the final destination for women in Disney’s Golden Age movies is marriage. The evil Maleficent is a matriarch with no husband, and is the exact opposite of the values Disney’s Golden Age movie upholds. Independent female power is villainized in the name of creating a role model (Aurora) for young women to look up to.
Disney teaches young girls that beauty is equivalent to innocence and goodness, while “ugliness” is equivalent to treachery (Sharim and Sattar). The female protagonists are often pictured with divine beauty, while female antagonists are decidedly not beautiful. Above all, Disney princesses are picture-perfect women, and young girls learn to idolize figures that can never exist in real life, which can be detrimental to the mental health of many young women. The beauty standard that Disney sets with its princess movies is not the only unrealistic standard in Sleeping Beauty. It is true that the point of a Princess movie is to be a “fairy-tale,” and to create wonderful, imaginative kingdoms full of magic, awe, and spectacle. Disney, however, chose to model the kingdom in Sleeping Beauty on an undeniably European city, thus “represent[ing] nostalgia for an uncomplicated, deracialized, edenic prehistory.” (Heatwole 1) The setting of Sleeping Beauty perpetuates the imperialism that American culture thrives on, and offers an alternative history, free of “the scars of American history, including those of racial genocide and Civil and World Wars,” which allows the characters to be portrayed as morally righteous (Heatwole 3). The kingdoms in Disney movies, but especially Sleeping Beauty, are the product of imperialistic expansion, and the erasure of imperial history idolizes kingdoms that are built on genocide.
Further, the entire premise of Sleeping Beauty is based on a man, Prince Charming, kissing an unknown woman, Aurora, in her sleep to “save” her. In modern times, this would be considered sexual assault, and thus this aspect of the story normalizes rape and sexual assault. The implicit rape in such a widespread children’s movie is concerning, as it allows for the continued normalization of rape in our society, and teaches children that it’s OK to act as Prince Charming did in the fairy tale. Rape culture is running rampant right now, and much of the media we consume normalizes, or even excuses, sexual violence (cite). Film and television (inform) rape culture because of the depiction of rape in television. While the kiss in Sleeping Beauty is not exactly a rape, the story suggests to children that kissing an unconscious person they barely know is a noble thing to do, and that the action, in fact, will help the unconscious person. Although this is just one small example, rape culture is exacerbated by these small actions becoming normalized through media and, consequently, more serious examples of sexual violence are also normalized.
We are now at a moment in society where the experience of a Disney princess movie is intergenerational. Sleeping Beauty was released in 1957, so although it was one of my favorite movies as a child, my mother and grandmother were also raised watching the movie. Young women now are privileged to understand the fantasy of Sleeping Beauty as just that, a fantasy, but previous generations were constantly rewarded for the submissive behavior that is idolized in Disney movies. The same unrealistic standards that Gen-Z looks up to have been force-fed to our mothers since they were our age, at a time when there was less of a precedent to expand past the constrictive, submissive values emphasized by Disney movies. This intergenerational response to Disney creates conflict in young women, as Alexandra Heatwole suggests in her essay, “Disney girlhood: princess generations and Once Upon a Time,” for a woman who “has ostensibly turned her back on the life her mother represents, there can be true grief, an inner flailing. The dilemma is no less affecting for being largely unconscious.” (Heatwole 6). Aurora is a character that was created before the second wave of feminism, and therefore cannot be an idol for girls and women who have lived through the second, third, or fourth waves of feminism. It can be hard, however, to part with the ideas so deeply ingrained in our favorite childhood figures.
The fourth wave of feminism, which started in the 2010s and emphasized intersectional female empowerment, especially empowerment in sexual identity, brought a noticeable shift in the images Disney emphasized (Malinowska 6). New princesses like Anna, Elsa, Merida, and Moana were portrayed in less heteronormative and diminishing ways, and Disney started to make live-action remakes and adaptations to their previous princess animations (Wang 36). In 2014, Disney released Maleficent, which has been widely praised for its feminist retelling of Sleeping Beauty and its necessary stray from Disney’s previous restrictive narratives. The 2014 retelling presents Maleficent as sympathetic to Aurora, and this version of Maleficent takes over a quasi-mother and protector role, as she cares for Aurora in the shadows throughout her life, and ultimately ends up helping break the spell she had previously cast on Aurora (Englebrecht 12). However, when I watched Maleficent for the first time as I worked on this essay, I was struck by how much anti-feminist rhetoric is still present in the so-called feminist Disney princess movie. It is true that Maleficent is celebrated for being a strong, powerful woman. However, she becomes the leader and villain that she is only after her wings are stolen from her by Prince Stefan, a man who she had fallen in love with. The scene where she gets her wings stolen from her bears an uncanny resemblance to a rape scene; she is drugged, violated, and wakes up utterly devastated. The scene is already difficult to watch, but using a rape story as her villain origin story suggests that a woman can only become all-powerful after a man has taken everything he wants from her. It also plainly villainizes rape victims. Additionally, the representation of Aurora doesn’t change much in Maleficent. According to a study by Caroline Wang, Aurora’s screen time is mostly passive and is only 4.28% “empowering” (Wang 46). The story of Maleficent adds a new restriction to the image of a successful woman, and “provides little practical support for contemporary female audiences yet regulates them within new gendered scripts of perpetual self-discipline.” (Wang 47) As Wang points out, Maleficent’s new origin story puts pressure on women to choose to be powerful, and stigmatizes women who don’t conform to preconceived notions of femininity.
All of this cannot be said without recognizing that the Disney Princesses provide an escape for many young girls and children. Being able to put on a dress and become a princess is a special feeling— one that I absolutely adored as a little girl. Partially due to the Disney dynasty of theme parks, stores, and costumes, many children (not just girls) find freedom in pretending to be a Disney princess. For example, I would consider myself a strong feminist who rejects the ideas perpetuated by the Disney franchise, but Sleeping Beauty was still my favorite movie as a girl. Disney and Sleeping Beauty are not inherently bad, and watching Sleeping Beauty on repeat did not make me want to stay at home and become a homemaker. It did, however, give me the idea that fairytale endings are the ultimate goals in life, and I often find myself romanticizing my future in a Disney princess-esque way. Even strong feminists have to fight the Disney princess brainwash of submissiveness, which is a testament to how pervasive the ideals of Sleeping Beauty are in society. Children mirror the media they take in, and we have to be mindful of the gender roles we are presenting to young and impressionable minds. The Disney princess movies are in need of some crucial upgrades, but these upgrades cannot come without inherent structural changes to the way Disney presents their princess stories. In the past year, it has felt like we are sliding back towards the Golden Age of Disney, towards pre-Roe vs Wade America, and back towards an age of female submission met by male domination. It is important for young children to have idols who don’t represent these past ideals, but rather represent an inclusive future. Sleeping Beauty is in critical need of an update so that young children can have bold, assertive, and empowered role models to grow up with.