If you are a woman of a certain age or the parent of a such a woman, no doubt the title of this post immediately got you humming the opening number from Disney’s 1991 version of Beauty and the Beast. My family owned that tape on VHS; in fact, I think it’s probably still somewhere in my parents’ basement. Even though my sisters and I must have spent the better part of our childhood and adolescent years watching it, I hadn’t thought about it again until recently. Last week, my ten-year-old daughter went to see the new live-action version of the film and fell every bit as in love with it as I did with the original.
Revisiting this touchstone of my childhood got me thinking. The movies both open with the same set up — intellectual misfit Belle chafing (in song!) against the quotidian conformity of her fellow townsfolk. The divergence manifests itself in lyrics like this:
Baker: Good Morning, Belle!
Belle: Good morning, Monsieur.
Baker: And where are you off to, today?
Belle: The bookshop. I just finished the most wonderful story, about a beanstalk and an ogre and a –
Baker: That’s nice. Marie! The baguettes! Hurry up!
As a bookish kid, I was 100% Team Belle. Her love of literature clearly made her superior to oafish townspeople like the Baker, and especially to that Philistine-in-Chief, Gaston.
Watching the same thing play out from the perspective of adult experience, though, I had a slightly different take. When I look at this same scene now, here’s what I see:
Baker (being polite): How’s it going, Belle?
Belle: Let me start to tell you the really long, convoluted plot of a fairy tale I just read…
Baker (realizing that a grown woman is about to fill his entire morning with a painstaking, blow-by-blow summary of a children’s book she’s irrationally excited about): Oh, hey, Belle. Um, that’s cool. I just realized that I’m super busy with these baguettes, though. Later!
Belle, like so many Disney heroines, is a child trapped in a woman’s body. Sure, we all love characters with child-like exuberance. That’s why the internet gets such a kick out of things like
this gnarly old dude tearing up the skate park. But this is especially true for female characters. Think of an iconic, lovable female character from a book or movie. Now ask yourself — is that woman fully an adult? I can think of male characters who manage to be magnetic, while still maintaining their dignity. You wouldn’t see Aragorn from
Lord of the Rings breathlessly wasting someone’s time with a dizzy recounting of a book he just read. And Atticus Finch doesn’t go around befriending birds and flowers
à la Snow White. Mr. Darcy may be uptight and arrogant, but he’s a compelling adult. James Bond, despite his Jack-the-lad demeanor, exudes manliness.
I can’t, however, think of a single adult female character who fully embodies an adult role while still remaining lovable. This is true, I admit, even of my own Lindsay Harding character. She’s trying to be a grown-up, but she’s got a long way to go. Remove the fun from a fictional heroine, and you’re left with a stick-in-the-mud. Or, worse, a bitch. Even the fact that female characters, like Belle in the song lyrics above, are often called girls is telling. Lots of iconic female characters actually are girls or at least very young women, from Anne Shirley to Alice in Wonderland to Katniss Everdeen. Am I wrong about this? I sure hope so. If you have a counter-example, leave it in the comments section.
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