On princesses and general damsels in distress.

Ended up watching more movies today, all Disney traditional animation. Beauty and the Beast (only ended up watching about half an hour last night, then fell asleep), Tarzan (only seen it once), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (never saw that in its entirety before today). Then I watched the first season of Avatar (the show, not the cheating-its-way-to-high-stature-with-pretty-graphics-and-a-sub-par-plot film). And by watched, I mean I listened while drawing, inking, and putting all the tiny scales onto a giant koi and a normal-sized scuba diver. First thing I've drawn for fun in a long time. Tomorrow I'm going to play around with coloring.

Anyways. The movies. I've been thinking. Although I am a hopeless romantic at heart, the concept of a damsel in distress really gets on my nerves. Let's think about the lineup of Disney princesses. Snow White cried and was rescued by her animal friends and her little men. Cinderella cried and her happy plump fairy godmother gave her a dress and a ride. Jasmine and Belle are a bit better, but are still comparably weak to the overbearing men in their lives (Jafar, Gaston). Ariel was okay, but ended up being rescued by her daddy, then her prince. Aurora, oh, don't get me started. She falls in love with men from dreams and decides to run off with them without even knowing their names. Then she falls asleep to wait for a kiss. Pocahontas and Mulan are on an entirely different tier; one's not even technically a princess, but Pocahontas has spunk and Mulan's a fucken warrior. Apparently Tiana's now included in the mix, which is fine by me. She's a modern girl compared to the rest, in both setting and creation, so I should hope she would be a bit stronger.

I'm not super-crazy-feminist like some people. But there's something about the traditional role of female protagonists in movies that irks me. Know something I've noticed? When the girls go exploring in intimidating locations, they hold their arms out a bit from their bodies, in an extremely delicate and ladylike gesture. I'd demonstrate it for you if you could see me now. Amy Adams parodies it in Enchanted. It's kind of disgusting, and her character of Giselle grows out of it towards the end of the movie. I realize that one reason why I like Hercules so much is that, even though Meg's still kind of a DiD, she's sarcastic and obnoxious and dry.

That said, I don't think it's bad to have princesses. Not all girls are like me. Some just need to be girly. I don't really have the right attitude to be girly. And I don't have the right body, and I don't have the right personality, and I don't have the right life.

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I just looked up 'Disney Princess' on Wikipedia and found my way over to an interesting article.

On my childhood in relation to this article:

I liked torturing my Barbies but also occasionally actually playing with them.
I remember being embarrassed of the baseballs on my bedposts for a period of time (I didn't even play baseball or softball, I just played catch with my dad) - but I'd picked out that bed because I thought it was cool. I still have that bed at home.
When I was younger I wore dresses, and liked them, and then one day decided that I would never wear a dress again.
I liked Legos and Hot Wheels and sometimes even dolls. Mostly, though, I liked empty boxes and blank paper and pencils and markers and my imagination and my little brother as a partner. We played spies and wizards and space-people.
I once had a Snow White dress, from Disney World. That dress was fucken awesome. (You may recall, ballgowns are on my list of things I like. I don't want to wear them, because I wouldn't look good. But I like them anyways. When other people wear them. They're pretty.)

Ooh, also. I think little girls in princess dresses are cute. The little girls dressed as mini-whores I see more and more lately, not so much. That's just depressing. (Then again, a grown woman in a princess dress would be awesome and kind of hilarious, and I can probably find one if I look hard enough - this is New York, after all - but grown women dressed as whores are just sad.)

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And while at the same time being a hopeless romantic, I also find myself laying the sarcasm on rather thickly while watching these movies by myself, holed up in my room. "Belle's falling in love with a fucken mutated bear. I mean, I know the whole thing about how it's the inside that counts, but he's not even human!" "Jane loves Tarzan because she loves gorillas. She probably has a wild man fetish, and he fulfills it. As for him, he's the first female of his species he's encountered since he was an infant. Of course the hormones are raging like crazy. I'm surprised he hasn't tried humping her yet. I mean, he wasn't raised in 'civilized' society, after all."

So very bitter.

And you'll notice Sunday's fast approaching. You probably won't want to be around me on Sunday. I wouldn't want to be around me. I'll probably be sullen as fuck, unless I find something to distract myself. Maybe I'll play World of Warcraft all day. (Wait, they have Love is in the Air going on right now, don't they? Hm, maybe no WoW..)

...

Speaking of, Brooke and Jen were talking about needing boyfriends like half an hour ago. I hate when people talk like that, because I want to say something and then I want to not say something and then I want to hurt something and then I want to walk out of the conversation and so I just sit there and don't say anything until they start talking about something different.

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Avatar is awesome; I haven't watched it in a long time but I miss it. Good times. Now I guess I'll start in on the second season. I love the SVA film library.

Rambles about movies, and watches too many,
Olivia