Recently there has been a campaign to get Elsa a girlfriend in the "Frozen" sequel. Even Idina Menzel, who voices Elsa, has joined her fans and the #GiveElsaAGirlfriend campaign to get the writers to create a lady love for the Snow Queen.
This is a horrible idea.
The writers should not give Elsa a girlfriend, and quite frankly (and more importantly), they should not give her a boyfriend either.
Disney is notorious for creating princesses who get swept of their feet by some sort of prince charming. Think back through their princesses: Ariel ends up with Eric, Belle with the Beast, Jasmine with Aladdin, Rapunzel with Flynn—oh yeah, and Anna with Kristoff. If the female character remains single, she almost always is too young to get married in the end of the movie or have a love interest. That is why I was impressed with Disney when Elsa remained single by the end of the movie.
Not only is Elsa single, she freaking shoots ice and snow out of her hands! She's a powerful lady, and she does just fine on her own. Do we want to teach children that the only way to find true fulfillment in life is to have a love interest? Sure, romance can be amazing, but it is not the only source of happiness and fulfillment in life. A single person does not have a lesser life because of a lack of romance, and he or she could even have a happier life than a couple. We often get swept away by romance because it makes our hearts pound and our stomachs flutter, but it can easily lead us to not appreciate what we have as well as forget that there is more to life than romance.
And here's the stinger: most children don't tend to understand romance when they watch Disney princess movies. They don't get the butterflies and excitement of seeing two characters finally become a couple—they only see that there is a princess and that she is happy because prince charming saved her. There is not really a deep sense of emotional enjoyment kids get from watching a romance because they do not yet understand it. After watching enough movies, all they know is that the princess is always supposed to end up with the prince. I'm not sure if that is a healthy mentality.
This does not mean that Elsa has to strut around in a power suit and hate men and fight the glass ceiling, but she does not need to have a love interest or get swept off her feet in order to find happiness. A life's success that is completely defined by romance is an unsteady and disappointing one. Think of how much responsibility is put on someone when we depend on him or her for all of the happiness in life—that is unfair and unrealistic.
Singleness is not about waiting around on standby until romance can let us be fully human. Disney needs to realize and teach the good things about being single: the freedom that comes with it, and the ability to explore our individuality. Instead of presenting the lonely single, why not the happy and friendship-filled individual?
On top of that, it is about time writers move on from the basic story structure of the single who meets the other single and lives happily ever after. Let's give children another option other than romance for happiness in life.
