This is a mini-rant on my girls’ latest favorite movie: Disney’s Cinderella. I grew up on the Grimm Brothers version, complete with the gory details about the stepsisters lopping off heels and toes to fit their feet into the glass slipper. And granted, Disney is not known for getting the story straight (anyone here read the real Hunchback of Notre Dame or the real Little Mermaid? They both die in the end!) But not until our 483rd viewing of the Disney version did I notice an important change in the distinction between the stepsisters and Cinderella.
When did the wicked stepsisters become known instead as the ugly stepsisters? It took me a long time to sort it out in my brain, because I distinctly remember reading them designated as wicked in the stories, but growing up you only ever hear about them being ugly. Now, I suppose one could argue that perhaps the term ugly could also be applied to their behavior, but their animated portrayal in the movie supports the adjective being applied to their physical appearance. They’re not very nice, of course, but their ugliness puts off everyone they meet, and it’s their most defining characteristic.
I think I prefer the stepsister in Ever After. At least she was a wicked – and pretty – portrayal.
I vote we go back to the wicked stepsisters. Judge these sisters by their actions and their behavior, not by their faces. Thanks a lot, Disney, for creating a link in our young daughters’ minds between beauty and goodness.
(And I just realized that’s the stupidest, most painfully obvious conclusion ever. Almost all of their movies portray this – the exceptions being the ones that star animals.)
So maybe this wasn’t such a mini-rant after all, or such a groundshaking discovery. But it is something of a wake-up call for me, and in that, it has great value.
Posted on October 18th, 2007 by Dove
Filed under: Rants
Unfortunately, as you have touched on, the attributes and “virtues” of physical beauty is so so so ingrained in our beings that even if you aren’t trying to judge people by their looks, it is instinctual, subconscious behavior. What is it about the eye and the brain that enjoy beauty? One can’t help but enjoy looking at something that is beautiful, a sunset, a waterfall, a cute baby, a pretty face, a nice figure. It sure takes a monumental amount of effort, a daily, long-term discipline, to not let physical appearance have an effect on your impressions of people.
That’s why the passage in Isaiah 53 really speaks to me of God’s omniscience of the tendencies of our human nature: when Jesus came in the form of a man, he intentionally came as an ordinary person.
“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (vs 2b – 3) He came as an ordinary person so that we would know that no matter what difficulties we faced due to our physical appearance, no matter how cruel the world’s judgements, and especially if we concluded in self-pity that we had been dealt an unfair hand, God Himself would always be able to relate to us, and had faced the exact same, and most probably, worse judgement than us. There’s my soapbox.