A Sedated Princess: Sleeping Beauty

Full Movie Plot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty_(1959_film)

Watching Sleeping Beauty this past weekend was definitely a blast from the past. Although I remembered liking the movie, I had forgotten the entire storyline – understandable, I suppose, since the last time I saw it was around age five or six. For those of you like me who need a basic refresher, the gist of the movie is that Princess Aurora is cursed by an evil queen to prick her finger and die before her 16th birthday. However, the last of Aurora's three fairy godmothers had not given Aurora her gift yet, so she gave baby Aurora an "adjustment" to the curse. Instead of dying after pricking her finger, Aurora would fall into a deep sleep, only to be awakened by her true love's kiss. However sappy, cliché, and medically improbable the storyline, one has to admire the romanticism. I must say I did enjoy the movie the second time around, but I noticed plenty that I wouldn't have as a five-year-old.

As in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs there was plenty of sexism even if you overlook the central idea that Princess Aurora has to completely depend on a man to save her.  As Sleeping Beauty grew into a teenager, she was growing into what I guess was supposed to be the epitome of beauty – big doe eyes, hair as "golden as the dawn", lips as "red as the rose", and a waist the diameter of a quarter. While our standards of beauty have thankfully changed at least somewhat since then, I still don’t think it's the greatest message to give to little girls. With eating disorders and poor body image hitting girls at younger and younger ages, I think girls' role models should promote healthy body weights and wider parameters for beauty. Sleeping Beauty represents a stereotypical early Disney princess, and therefore a lack of diverse races, personalities, or body types. A degree of sexism is also present in the fairies that raise Princess Aurora. The red and green fairies, Flora and Fauna, are conventional “ladies”; they’re politically correct and more interested in the pretty things in life, like music, baking, and dresses. The blue fairy, unlike her sisters, is disagreeable and uninhibited. She is therefore portrayed as clumsy, unattractive, and generally manlier. In this Disney film, females are clearly divided into two categories: they are proper and ladylike, or ugly and virile.

Another thing I noticed while watching the movie for the second time was the shockingly poor judgment of Princess Aurora. After encountering a strange boy in the woods, she strikes up a conversation, sings a song with him, and invites him over to her house for her birthday party. At first she’s hesitant because she’s been taught not to talk to strangers, but upon remembering that she’s met him before – in a dream – she’s completely open with him and tells him where she lives. Fortunately for Princess Aurora, in a pleasant twist of fate the man she meets in the woods is a prince (and one she’s actually scheduled to marry) and not a serial rapist or anything like that. Once again, our Disney princess isn’t proving to be the best role model for young girls.

So, all in all, I enjoyed the movie for its simple, whimsical plot and for old time’s sake; however, I was shocked at how poor a role model Princess Aurora was. For all the Disney-princess-loving little girls’ sakes, I hope they find some more appropriate role models ASAP.

Picture from this website