As we finish up our unit on women in literature, I've come to a lot of realizations about myself and how society has affected my view of myself as a woman. One specific realization is that some of my goals seem to have been set for me, in that I’ve always had them and never really given them a second thought as to why I have these goals. For example, I’ve always wanted to get married. It’s not something I think about constantly, and it’s nowhere near the only goal I have, but it’s always just seemed like the expected thing to do. I never really considered it an option to not fall in love one day and get married. Now since we’ve started discussing this unit, I’ve started to think about why this is the way it is. Why am I planning on marriage, not ever thinking about the other options? And I think I’ve finally come to the answer – Disney Princesses. Obviously there are other things that have influenced me into this mindset, but I believe Disney Princesses have had a major impact on me since I have been watching their movies hundreds of times ever since I can remember.
Most Disney Princesses often have one goal: fall in love with the prince, get married, and live happily ever after. I guess I always knew this, but watching a video by Jenna Marbles caused me to realize how ridiculous the ending to every Disney Princess movie is. Jenna Marbles says in this video, “They (Disney Princess Movies) also taught me that my main goal in life should be to find a prince, and marry him…the end. There’s never another plot for a chick Disney star other than, you fall in love at the end.” I think this is why I have the goal of getting married. I was a huge fan of Disney Princesses when I was little and I watched all of their movies all the time. Seeing all the weddings, all the princes, hearing the “…and they lived happily ever after…” is what I believe caused me to develop the goal of getting married. I mean, you have to admit that “happily ever after” sounds pretty good. But that’s the problem, that phrase is always associated with the princess marrying the prince at the end of the movie. There’s never a “and she became a doctor, supported herself financially as a strong, independent woman, and lived happily ever after…” ending. No, it’s always “she got married, and lived happily ever after.” 
This probably has a huge impact on young girls that watch these movies on constant replay like I used to. They become convinced that to be happy, they have to be married and be a wife. This idea is also present in The Awakening. One of the characters, Adele, is completely content as a wife and mother. Job? No. Goals? None that she openly discusses. She was raised to believe that her goals in life should be to find a man with a respectable social standing, get married, and raise their children. And I’m not saying that being a wife and mother is dishonorable in any way. I respect women that are stay at home moms. It’s a perfectly respectable job, as long as that’s what they want to do and not what they think they must do in order to be happy. Being married and having children should be an option, not an expectation. There are plenty of other ways to live “happily ever after,” and young girls should be taught to grow up and define what “happily ever after” means to them, not what it means to a fictional Disney Princess whose prince didn’t even recognize her the next morning and had to test her identity by putting a shoe on her.
*Note: The Jenna Marbles video I referenced can be watched here: http://youtu.be/2rT28Z0xM88 but the language is EXTREMELY bad. She does make a few good points though.
