Most people know the story of Beauty and the Beast, but many viewers look beyond the issues that lie beneath the fairytale. For decades, this blockbuster was considered a "forward-thinking" or "feminist" film because Belle reads books and has self-determination, but with a deeper examination, this story can be extremely harmful to young girls.
Belle is a strong and unapologetically intelligent woman, and that is a rarity in Disney films, but that powerful female character slowly becomes a submissive shell and a poster child for outer beauty. She is gorgeous to anyone's standards, and that catches the eye of the aggressive beast and jail keeper.
She stops being recognized as a smart human being and is labeled as a pretty girl with the absence of other skills and capabilities. The beast is abrasive and abusive; he throws things at Belle and screams in her face until he is given the advice to treat her with actual human decency in order to make her fall in love with him.
The beast is seen as a tortured soul in this film, drowning in self-pity because he was only seen as an angry monster, which he was. Belle, just like in many other fairy tales, endures the abuse and "saves" him in a sense. The beast was attracted to Belle for her outer appearance and nothing more, which diminishes the smart character that was presented in the beginning. Women have to look beyond appearance or they are seen as shallow, but when men are mesmerized by a woman's looks, it's justified because "the male brain thinks differently."
The beast went from being extremely callous and cruel to being fairly decent, and that's all it took for Belle to fall head over heels in love with him. That is a dangerous message because it teaches young girls to settle for being treated with basic human decency because it's at least better than being abused. Beyond that, it teaches people that when the male gaze is prevalent, the most important thing is how aesthetically pleasing you are.
It teaches young girls to romanticize unhealthy relationships, and that if they are submissive and suffer through mistreatment, their male significant other will become a prince, just like the beast did. He had the upper hand and he used it to drain her from everything empowering about her character, and that is extremely problematic. Romance-focused plots are okay to some extent, but I wouldn't want my future daughter to believe that's all that matters in the world. Most importantly, I wouldn't want any young girl to think that it's okay to tolerate abuse in hope that her life turns into a misguided fairy tale.
1 in 4 women will be victims of domestic abuse in their lifetime. By no means am I insinuating it's because of the creation of Beauty and the Beast, but young girls are conditioned to believe mistreatment from males is okay, and this is one of too many toxic examples of it.
