Why Disney Princesses Are Perfect Role Models

I saw an article today titled "Why Drag Queens Are Better Role Models Than Disney Princesses" and the arguments it presented caught me a little off guard. Not because I believe drag queens are bad role models, but because I believe Disney princesses are fantastic ones.

The article presents three main arguments: 1. Drag queens don't discriminate (while disney does because only a handful of princesses aren't white.) 2. Drag queens work for what they have (but only one princess has a job.) and 3. Drag queens have a sense of humor (but I guess princesses don't?)

Don't get me wrong, I agree 100% that drag queens aren't discriminatory, they work hard and they know how to laugh and have a good time. All things that someone might look for in a role model. This, however, does not mean Disney princesses aren't similar in these rights.

1. The reason most Disney Princesses are white is because those movies started coming out in the 1930's, and most of them are based on even older folklore, fairytales, etc. When these princesses were being brought to life, the idea of racial equality wasn't around. The princesses race reflects the times they were thought up. It makes sense that we didn't have an African-American princess until after we came leaps and bounds in terms of racial equality. So what if the first five princesses are white? Princesses of any other race when they made their Disney debuts would have been just as big of a deal as it apparently is today for them to not be more diverse.

2. So only one princess had a paying job, but that does not mean the rest of them weren't working their asses off long before her. Cinderella spent every day hard at work doing whatever her step-mother told her to do, Pocahontas spent long hours in the fields to help sustain her tribe and Mulan trained hard to be a soldier for her country. Yes, generally "princess" means you're born into wealth and don't have to work, and while that's true of many of them, they also didn't sit around and do nothing.

3. I don't even understand this argument. Ok, so yes, drag queens do have a sense of humor and the ability to make their audiences laugh. This article, however, specifically says "I can't recall one princess with the ability to laugh at her ridiculous plights. Instead, the princesses always awaken into a smiling song" Sorry that princesses don't have a sense of humor about the fact that they were locked in towers for years, thrown into the woods alone or mistreated by an evil step-mother after suffering the loss of both parents. Would you laugh about that? As for them awakening into a smiling song, even if they don't necessarily have a sense of humor about their situations at least they're able to stay positive. Most people who have survived what these princesses went through before finding happily ever after wouldn't be laughing about it either. 

So there you have all of the main arguments easily refuted, but what bothered me most about this article's opinion wasn't even one of the main arguments but rather a side note thrown in at the end:

“[Disney Princesses] are a perpetuation of the stereotype of the weak, dumb woman who obediently waits for a man to come along and make her valuable.”

Now I personally like to think that I'm a princess, but princess to me has never meant being weak or dumb or waiting for a man. It means the exact opposite. To me being a princess means being strong and intelligent. I also believe it means not needing a man to rely on, but that doesn't mean you can't still want to find true love. 

I truly believe that Disney Princesses perfectly uphold the idea of strong, intelligent, and independent young women. Here's just a few of them who not only show what a real princess is, but are also the perfect role model:

Belle: The movie starts with literally the whole town making fun of her for being “odd” because she’s intelligent, and all she does is read all the time. And yes, maybe her favorite part of the book she’s reading is when the main character meets prince charming, but despite the fact that she’s looking for him, she doesn’t settle for the most handsome man in town who just so happens to want to marry her. She turns him down and falls for a beast instead. Although he may end up being a handsome prince in the end, he wasn’t when she fell in love with him. Plus, she ended up in the Beast’s castle after bravely going by herself through some sketchy woods to save her father, and taking his place so that he could be free. As far as I’m concerned Belle is far from the helpless little girl who needs a man to make her valuable. She doesn’t care what other people think about her and she isn’t looking for a handsome man to save her, or even a necessarily handsome man at all. 

Pocahontas: If you want to find a strong, intelligent young woman who could care less about her relationship status, look no further than Pocahontas. She works hard to help her tribe, she knows everything there is to know about the land around her, and she is much less than thrilled about the idea of being married off. She wasn’t sitting around doing nothing waiting for a man when John Smith came along, and when he did show up, she taught him more than he ever taught her. It seems like John Smith needed Pocahontas a lot more than she needed him.

Mulan: How many girls do you know that would pretend to be a man and go off to a war so that their disabled father wouldn’t have to go risk his life? Answer: none. Mulan was a badass. She survived a war and saved her entire country. I don't think anyone weak could do that. She also never sat around and waited for a man. She didn’t even want one. She spends all that time getting prettied up and meeting with a matchmaker not because she wants a husband, but because she wants to bring honor to her family. Had it been up to her she probably never would have gone to see a matchmaker in the first place. It was her family that was pushing this idea of needing a man to make you valuable, not her own personal views. Weak, dumb and waiting for a man is the exact opposite of Mulan.

Jasmine: Princesses are supposed to just sit around and wait for a man to come along and be perfectly content to do so, right? Well Jasmine disagrees. Although that’s what her father wants her to do it is far from the life she wants for herself. She runs away from her perfect palace and falls for a commoner: a.k.a. a man who has no way of making her “more valuable.” And although her attempt failed, she also ends up being the one who tries to save him, not the other way around. When Aladdin comes back to find her, this time as a handsome prince, she wants nothing to do with him. It isn’t until she realizes who he really is that she falls in love with him again. Of course, Aladdin does end up rescuing Jasmine in the end, but that isn’t to say she is weak or dumb, and she had fallen in love with him long before he saved her.

There are plenty of examples of Disney princesses who are far from the stereotype of weak, dumb, women. And while all of these princesses do end up with a man by their side in the end, it isn't because they sat around and waited for them or because they needed them to make them more valuable. It's because whether you want to agree or not, everybody wants to find true love. These princesses are all lucky enough to have found it, and probably not because they were weak and dumb, but because they were the exact opposite. 

These women were strong. These women were smart. And these women didn't need  a man (not all of them even wanted one,) but they were still lucky enough to find an amazing one.

If you're looking for a character to be a good role model, I see no one more fit for the job than a Disney Princess. 

~Melissa Tamar

If you want to read the original article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joy-martinmalone/drag-queens_b_4006697.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Reasons and Silver Linings

We all know the phrase "everything happens for a reason."

We use it as a way to make us feel better when things go wrong, a way to justify the current events in our lives. I used to believe whole heartedly that it was absolutely true, there is a reason for everything that happens, whether or not we know what that reason is.

For a little while I stopped believing that everything happens for a reason, mostly because a few things I really wanted didn't go my way and I couldn't believe there was any possible explanation why.

I like to think that I'm a fairly optimistic person most of the time, and while I admit there was a period of glass-half-empty attitude following a few things whose results I wasn't too pleased with, I ended up with a theory on the idea that "everything happens for a reason." We all have things that don't go as planned and events or outcomes that seem to have no reason, and while some people are content to feel bad for themselves for far too long, I'm not one of them. That's why I decided to share my personal approach to making the most out of everything that happens.

DISCLAIMER: Whether or not you believe in everything happening for a reason, this whole approach is going to require you to keep an open mind about it.

Rule Number 1: Make a Reason for Everything that Happens

If you believe that everything happens for a reason, chances are you're going to try to find that reason every time something unplanned happens. But you shouldn't. Reasons present themselves when they want to and sometimes you'll find them right away, but sometimes it can take a long, long time, and you don't need to waste all that time searching.

Like I said, it can be a long time before you ever realize what the reason behind something was. Until then, you don't need to know what the real reason was, you can make it for yourself. Come up with every possible reason why something could've happened the way it did, instead of the way you planned it. Who knows, maybe the reason you make up for yourself will be the real one, or one of many real reasons. As long as the reason you make makes sense to you, there's no reason why that can't be the real one.


Rule Number 2: Find the Silver Lining

As aforementioned, I like to think I'm a pretty optimistic person, and as an optimist I truly think it is rare that something happens and no good comes of it. Thus, the silver lining. Everything has one if you look close enough. Every less than ideal situation you find yourself in will result in at least one good thing. Maybe you'll learn a life lesson, maybe your attitude towards something or someone will change. Even going to the dentist, a less than ideal situation for most people, has a silver lining: you usually get a sticker (or free toothpaste, because for some reason medical offices seem to think 18 year olds are too old for stickers, which absolutely is not true.) Regardless of how bad things look, there is always a silver lining. You may need to look at things from a new perspective or get outside input on a situation, but I promise you will find one if you look close enough.

Rule Number 3: Reverse the Phrase

This rule is less about making the most out of everything that happens, and more about realizing what has happened as the result of what you didn't realize was a reason. Think if it as an exercise in finding a reasons.

The phrase is "everything happens for a reason" right? And that's the order it usually goes in, something happens and it's not till later that the reason shows up. A situation (what happened) comes first, and the reason it happened doesn't show up until later. Just like the phrase suggests, the reason comes second. Sometimes though, one tiny little reason can be the beginning of something happening, and it isn't until later that you look back and realize what something started.

That's actually the whole inspiration behind this post, realizing the reason for something.
Yesterday I was texting my best friend, as I do all day every day (we are never, not talking) when we started talking about the reason we're even friends. Here's a little backstory for those of you who don't know the two of us, or for those of you who do but somehow haven't heard this:

Sophomore year at a convention we happened to be sitting at the same table for dinner with some mutual friends. She was having a conversation with the girl sitting in between us when all of the sudden I overheard the word "tomfoolery." Don't ask me why I thought that was so funny, but for some reason I did, so I asked her "did you actually just use the word tomfoolery in a sentence and can we be friends?" She said yes to both, told me her name was Nikki and the rest is history. Three years later and she's still my best friend in the world.

Whenever one of us needs advice about anything, we always go to each other, and yesterday was no exception. After we solved the problem being faced at the time I got a text from her that said
"For the record, it's a really good thing I decided to use the word tomfoolery in a sentence at winter conventions cuz like what would I do if you weren't my best friend?"
That one thought got us both thinking: what if she hadn't said that? We would've met each other eventually at another convention but would we be as close as we are now?

This is the perfect example of there being a reason for everything that happens. Not for everything happening for a reason, but the other way around. The reason came first. The entire reason that we are best friends is because of one word that she said at the exact right time on December 21, 2010. The next three years of friendship is what happened, but the reason came first.

Obviously this rule doesn't apply to using "everything happens for a reason" to find the upside of a bad situation. It actually isn't really a rule at all. It would probably be more appropriate to call it the exception, since it is just using the phrase backwards. Either way, it can give you a new perspective on something you never thought very long and hard about (like the reason you and your best friend are in fact best friends.)

So that is my approach to the idea of everything happening for a reason, but to sum things up I have a song quote:

"Some believe in destiny and some believe in fate, I believe that happiness is something we create."

To be honest, I believe in all three of those, and I think my rules to applying "everything happens for a reason" requires all three. To find or trust the reason behind things that have happened, it helps to believe in destiny and fate. If you don't believe in either though, it's still easy to come up with your own reasons or to find your silver lining, as long as you believe that you create your own happiness.

By no means am I pretending that I have really good advice or saying that this will work for everyone, but if for some crazy reason you decide to trust me, this always works for me.

Whether it's as a result of this advice or not, I hope you find your reasons and silver linings.

~Melissa Tamar

To Where We've Been and Where We're Going

It's pretty easy to go from day to day without ever really stopping to think about where you are in life. It seems like the only time we stop to actually think about it is during transitions in life, and maybe during the new year, depending on how big you are on reflection. There's no doubt that right now I'm going through a major transition - moving out and going to college. It's also the new year (Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year for those of you who don't know,) and as it turns out I'm pretty big on reflection too so if you combine those three factors I've definitely spent some time recently thinking about where I am in life.

A year ago I knew that I would be moving away soon, but I had no idea where to. For awhile I was hoping maybe I would end up at University of Maryland or University of Georgia, but I soon realized neither of those places were going to start me on the path I wanted to take (at least not until junior year when journalism school applications opened.) After narrowing down my list, finishing applications, and getting acceptance letters, where I would end up came down to four potential places: Tempe, AZ, Ft. Collins, CO, Bloomington, IN or Boulder, CO.

(If you happen to be friends with me, or even just facebook friends with me, you probably (hopefully) know where I ended up. If you don't, just keep reading.)

Last year at this time I remember sitting in the back of the temple I grew up in at Rosh Hashana services thinking "this might be the last year here", and instead of reflecting on everything that had happened in 5772, I was looking forward. Not even to the coming year, but the year after. I knew that the upcoming year was going to be a year all about figuring out my future. It was a year that was about the years to come.

Fast forward to this Rosh Hashana and now I'm living that future. It's weird to think that just one year ago I didn't know what city I would be living in right now. Let alone a year ago - I didn't know what city I would be living in now until late April.

Back to having four potential future homes- I pretty quickly eliminated 3 of those choices. So you would probably think that that means I easily decided where I wanted to go and that's where I am now, happily ever after. But no. At the time I decided that more than anything I wanted to go to Bloomington to study at Indiana University. I had my heart and my mind set and I was ready to pack my bags and head out to Hoosier nation.

I don't really need to go into detail about the many reasons why that didn't end up working about, so let's just leave it at the fact that out of state tuition is really really ridiculously high.

I don't think I realized it at the time but I got my mind so set on going to IU that I forgot how much I loved the other schools I had gotten into. I let myself forget the fact that something I had dreamed of for six years was still there waiting for me.

If you haven't guessed by now that I obviously ended up in staying in Colorado (out of state tuition comment should've been a hint), or you have but couldn't figure out where in Colorado I went, then here ya go...

When I stepped onto the CU campus for the 1st time in 2007 to bring my brother to school, I knew it was where I wanted to go. Fast forward six years and I couldn't be more excited to officially be a University of Colorado Buffalo.

I think the point of this post started out as advice to make sure you stop to think about where you are in life more often than usual, and ended up just being a story about where I've been in life for the past year. So I guess the moral of the story goes out to all of you current high school seniors, freaking out about the fact that you don't know where you're going to be a year from now. It's more than ok to freak out, because it's scary not knowing. But just keep in mind that you're going to end up right where you belong, even if it's not where you thought it was going to be.

It's officially been two weeks for me of living in Boulder: dorm life, dining halls, classes, getting lost on campus, making new friends, winning rival football games and so much more and I could not be happier (or more exhausted.)

And L'Shana Tova to all my Jewish followers! May you have a wonderful and sweet new year - wherever it takes you.

Here's to where we've been and where we're going - but most importantly, where we are right now.

~Melissa Tamar
(Blogger Buff)