By Paula Renaye
I was channel surfing the other night and ran across Snow White.
It was never my favorite Disney movie, but feeling a bit nostalgic, I
decided to watch for a few minutes. It turned out to be a very few.
Instead of the anticipated warm-fuzzy jaunt down memory lane, I had a
nails-on-chalkboard reminder of the stifling gender roles and social
expectations of the era.
I happened to pop in just after the beautiful princess had broken and entered, compulsively cleaned and cooked, and was blissfully napping in bed—every man’s housewife/mother/beauty queen dream, right? More than enough reason to change the channel, but I hung in there, thinking something might tug at my heartstrings and beg me to stay. Unfortunately, the ultra-high-pitched vocal twittering of the absurdly delusional heroine, not to mention the slow and painful sequence of the dwarfs figuring out what to about her, very nearly had me screaming.
Now, let’s compare that to Disney’s modernized version of the Rapunzel story, Tangled.
Stolen as an infant by a vain and seriously narcissistic old hag who uses her captive’s magical hair to stay young and beautiful, Rapunzel hasn’t set foot out of her tower since she was nabbed. Mommy dearest has convinced her that the world is a scary place and that she’s too dumb, weak, naïve, helpless, inept—basically, she’s marked for death due to stupidity—to even think about stepping a toe outside.
So far she and Snow White are on the same page. However, in spite of being programmed with more fears than a fainting goat, Rapunzel meets her challenge with a frying pan and a vengeance. She manages to singlehandedly conk and capture a desperate young man who climbs the tower into her room to escape his own problems.
After bludgeoning him with a frying pan, stealing his stolen treasure and tying him to a chair with her hair, she forces him into a deal. He has to take her where she wants to go, which is where he’s just run away from, in order to get his treasure back. Since he has a “dead or alive” bounty on his head, going back and dealing with all his poor choices isn’t high on his list of things to do. But he wants his treasure back so off they go.
Along the way, Rapunzel and Eugene each have to grow up, face their fears, reject the labels placed on them by others and find their own identities and places in the world. It’s the hero’s journey that we all have to make.
If we live our lives based on the beliefs, expectations, limitations and fears imposed on us by others, we can never be truly happy. But the reason we do it is because we are afraid of what will happen if we don’t. We fear that if we aren’t the person we are expected to be—if we don’t do what others want us to—we will be rejected, abandoned and left utterly alone.
It may be true, but it is only true for the people who love us for what we do for them instead of who we are—like the old hag. She didn’t really love Rapunzel, she simply wanted the magic hair around. She programmed the princess so there’d be no issues with singing and activating the golden fountain of youth on command. The cajoling “mommy knows best” refrains to squash any dreams of leaving the tower were pretty effective right up until she showed her by screaming “you will never leave.”
So, if you don’t like the limitations you’ve been living with, let them go. If you don’t like the beliefs you’ve been programmed with, see them for what they are and rewire new ones that serve you. If you aren’t living up to expectations, figure out if they’re really yours or someone else’s then decide if you want to keep them.
Bottom line, no matter where you came from, who told you what, how many mistakes you’ve made or what’s happened before today, it’s up to you to choose what you do with tomorrow.
Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work we go…
Live your joy!
Former eggshell-walker, emotionally-bankrupt wreck and utter failure at keeping her world from falling apart, Paula Renaye uses her journey out of despair into joy as a breadcrumb trail for others. Paula is a certified professional coach, empowerment speaker and multi-award-winning author of The Hardline Self Help Handbook. Visit http://hardlineselfhelp.com
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