Disney Challenge Day 3 and 4

Heroines and Princes

Day #3: Favorite Heroine 

Maybe I'm cheating a little bit on this one, but I maintain that it's still fair. While Anna from 'Frozen' is my favorite Disney character, I have to say that Belle from 'Beauty and the Beast' is my favorite heroine. Technically, Belle isn't a princess throughout like 99% of her movie and therefore she's more of a heroine than a princess.

I feel like there's very little that needs to be said about this topic. She really is the best. She's well-read, open-minded, loyal to her family, and--above all--she's not desperate! We don't really know much about Cinderella's dating life, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suspect that she didn't really have much time to go out on many dates after working all day. She fell head over heels with literally the very first guy she danced with and knew nothing about him other than that he's charming.

Belle had Gaston wrapped around her finger. He was the most popular boy in school (or in their case, the most popular guy in their poor provincial town) and he was nuts for her. He wanted her to marry him and bear him lots of little babies. And for every other female in that town, that seemed like the ideal life. But Belle was not only wise enough to see that Gaston wasn't exactly the kindest fellow, she also had enough self-respect to turn him down. She wasn't so desperate for love and affection that she settled for the first bozo that came knocking. Not only that, but she was incredibly polite in her rejection of Gaston. Belle is just a classy lady.

In my limited-yet-often-awkward-and-humorous dating encounters, I know that it can be difficult to distinguish between attention/affection and actually having true feelings for someone. Kudos for Belle for being able to not only tell the difference, but being brave enough to act on it. While she had a severe case of wanderlust, she realized that her chances of leaving the town were slim and her chances of finding a suitable man were even more slim. Gaston was potentially the only marriage offer that she was going to get. She chose to live the single life rather than settle for a man that she didn't love. Coming from living in a Mormon college town where it's pretty taboo to not find yourself a man and get hitched at a young age, Belle is pretty much a rockstar in my humble opinion.

That's even before you get into any of the awesomeness that occurs as she encourages her dad to follow his dreams despite how badly his mere existence embarrasses her with the cool kids in town. Or how she immediately jumps on a horse to head off into scary wolf-infested woods when her dad goes missing. Not to mention how perfectly selfless she is when she doesn't even hesitate to take her father's place in jail for the rest of her life. Then we get into how she sees all of the Beast's flaws and insecurities and character defects and his terrifying physical appearance, and still falls in love with him anyways.

Please, find me a better Disney heroine. Belle is the cream of the crop.

Day #4: Favorite Prince

This one was much harder because most of the prince-and-princess movies focus more on the princess rather than the prince. It's a smart move on Disney's part because more girls want to be Cinderella rather than boys want to watch a whole movie based on Prince Charming. But, at the same time, it means that we don't know the princes nearly as well as their female love interests.

With one exception: Aladdin.

Maybe it's because of the rocking soundtrack, but I just love this movie. I'm a sucker for a good tale about an underdog and Aladdin is the epitome of the underdog. Plus, the fact that he's so in awe of Jasmine that he'd use his 3 wishes from the Genie to try and woo her...that's commitment right there. Considering the fact that he's totally homeless and his only friend is a monkey, there are probably more logical uses for those wishes (a house with no mortgage payments, unlimited groceries, etc!) but he uses it to try and melt a princess's heart. And that, to me, is pretty darn romantic.