Princess Jasmine is my favorite Disney Princess. Let me say that again. Princess Jasmine is my favorite Disney Princess and has been since 1992. Aladdin was my favorite movie until… way later than most people stopped saying a Disney movie was their favorite movie. She is feisty and yells a lot and is the only princess who wears pants. You may remember previous blog posts have talked about my love for harem pants, that probably started there.
I LOVE Princess Jasmine! She has a tiger and is independent and I want to be her!
And my feelings for Princess Jasmine will never change.
Which brings me to Princess Anna and the movie Frozen. I also love Frozen. I know some people claim it is overrated and no one can let go of “Let It Go.” Those people are wrong. Frozen is lovely. I love that the first guy isn’t the right one. I love that the actual right guy starts as a friend. I love Sven, he reminds me of my dog. I LOVE PRINCESS ANNA! I also love Elsa but this is not about Elsa and her amazing ice magic or how she grows into herself. This blog is about Princess Anna.
When Frozen came out I took my best friend to see it for her birthday. Halfway through the song “For the First Time in Forever,” Erin turned to me, pointed at the screen, and said, “that is definitely you.”
I thought for a second and responded, “I’ve never wanted to be someone more. I hope she turns out to be good.”
That was that. I loved the movie and Erin loved the movie and I loved Princess Anna. A few weeks later, once it was done crushing it in the expensive theaters, I took my mom to see it in a small second run theater we liked to go to. We reached the point in the movie where Anna is trying to climb the north mountain on her own and Kristoff is telling her she is going to kill herself. Anna throws herself off the mountain saying, “catch. Thanks, that was like a crazy trust exercise.” My mom looked at me and said, “I’m pretty sure that is you.” My mom did not know about Erin’s previous declaration.
A year or so passes and my friend Sam, someone I grew up with, tweeted, “I do not know why but every time Anna punches Hans, I think of Katie.”
Three unrelated sources never associated me with Princess Jasmine. I love her, I want to be her, I do not connect with her quite the same way I connected with Princess Anna. (Also, if I spoiled the movie for any of you, the movie came out in like 2013 it has a sequel. If you haven’t seen it yet, that’s on you.)
Here’s the thing, I do love Anna. Anna is feisty. She is strong and willing to fight for herself and the people she loves. She is isolated and still optimistic and joyful. She doesn’t give up for anything. Anna is resilience and fight and I strongly connect with that, though I am not quite so good as she is.
She still wasn’t my favorite princess yet. I could not let go of Jasmine and Aladdin and everything they taught me. Jasmine helped me become the adult that I am. Then, Frozen 2 came out and Frozen 2 was really the tipping point. Frozen 2 was a significantly more complex film than I was expecting and as great as Elsa’s continued journey of self-discovery was great, the fact that Anna was shown taking the hardest possible circumstances and still made the right choices, without being magical, was amazing to see. It was important to see.
For me, being 30 and seeing a character make the hard choices and be bold even though the right thing was a hard thing, and being brave, was important. That was inspiring to me, even being a fully grown and powerful woman.
And, after I got done crying over Kristoff proposing to Anna with her super powered, avatar, fifth element sister stand next to her and saying that Anna was the most amazing person he had ever met, I changed my favorite princess. This was a character who I understood. She was 100% fight and 100% this is what is right and I’m going to do it no matter what. This was the character that I needed to see and could relate to.
We talk a lot about representation in film and literature and how important it is. How it is important to see characters that you can relate to, and it is. As much as I love Princess Jasmine, she was a character who I wanted to be not a character I felt like I was and got to see her in situations that were hard. What I love about Princess Anna is I feel like her personality and mine are similar and I got to see her make choices that were hard and be brave. It was really special to see a character who was portrayed as feminine and brave and funny. She is a different kind of character and it is very exciting to see her and know that the younger girls that I get to spend time with get to see her too.
I don’t really know where I am going with this essay, there isn’t really a point. I just love this character who is portrayed as being both powerless and powerful. That’s it.
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