Love is tricky, and like most, I think about it constantly. Call me a romantic, but I blame Disney. As I’ve grown, and loved, and hated, and felt hopeless, and have gotten the butterflies and had my butterflies run away, I have concluded that nothing on this planet is more misleading than Disney princess movies. I grew up watching Princess Ariel on repeat (I can still recite the entire movie word for word,) and I can tell you that real life is no Little Mermaid love story. Falling in love and being granted a “happily ever after,” doesn’t just happen. And as much as I’ve dreamed of being swept up by a man on a white horse that is the other pea to my pod, I’ve realized: the world is founded on imperfections. However, women have been trained since they were children to believe that a fairy-tale love story is in their destiny, and with living a morally correct life, everything will fall into place. Whether their inspiration was Ariel, Aurora, Cinderella, Jasmine or Snow White, girls everywhere believe that love is a given and is effortless, however, this is a Beauty and the Beast world. Women don’t get swept off their feet from a knight in shining armor and live a beautiful fantasy life (as nice as that sounds.) People are imperfect. The man you fall in love with will probably be a little scary sometimes. He will probably be completely unattractive in so many ways, but so completely breathtaking in others. He may not have hair like a grizzly bear (but then again…. He might.)
The Disney movie I believe to have the most honesty when speaking of love is Beauty in the Beast; they show how hard love is, whereas so many others fail to do so.
Of course growing up you probably won’t have to trade yourself in as a prisoner for your dad to survive, and fall in love with the Disney version of Chewbacca, but I’d bank to say that’s more realistic than falling in love with some perfectly clean, glowing man in the forest on a white horse without a spot of dirt on him and falling in love by sight, and never facing a problem together. Love is imperfect. Love is sacrifice, and a challenge and love is a bond between two beings' souls. It’s not about how clean, beautiful or put together they are. Love (the eternal kind) is something that Beauty and the Beast showed me when The Little Mermaid failed to do so: love is scary. Love is deep. Love is acquired. Most people won’t find their true love on the ocean floor and risk their life for them after their first encounter, however, will be skeptical of the person they are getting involved with. They will probably keep a safe distance until there is some sense of relation, and will fall in love gradually.
That is what I truly love about Beauty and The Beast; Belle fell in love with the Beast’s personality, not his beauty or a feeling that was overwhelming. She knew he was scary, and imperfect, and that it took patience and understanding to get to the “happily ever after.”
But as I come to the end, I realize I’ve been supporting Disney through Beauty and The Beast this entire article because my entire life I’ve failed to desire a Beauty and The Beast kind of Love. I grew up with my heart set on The Little Mermaid, without accepting that love is imperfect.
So Disney, you ruined me through allowing me to be ignorant. You gave me hopes that my life would end with me on a beach somewhere singing to my prince and talking to dolphins, without showing me more films like Beauty and The Beast. Women in our society believe that love is effortless because of idols like Cinderella and Ariel, when Belle is the reality of life that has been shut out in society although it is the most realistic.
Love is imperfect, scary and hard to find: I thank Beauty and The Beast for teaching me that.
