I loved my 9th grade English teacher. He was fun, and understanding, and he was also the director for the school plays I was in. One day in English class, we were discussing Disney heroines (a.k.a. the Princesses). I’m not sure why, but we often talked about weird things, like “Zen Stapling” and the deities that you could identify in Disney’s movie Hercules. So this one day he was talking about how he didn’t like how the Princesses because they never fend for themselves and had to wait to the Princes and stuff… (Except Mulan. He really liked her. Why? Because She kicked Hun Butt. And got a guy in the end. So that’s cool. ) He also said how he doesn’t like Belle and her story. Here is my version of what he said: “There she was, loving a guy for what he was: a beast. Then, suddenly he’s a good lookin’ guy! Why couldn’t they have just kept the story with her loving an ugly guy?”
Now, at the time I just laughed with the class over this. But since then, I’ve given it more thought from time to time. Here are my thoughts on this love story: Belle made the Beast handsome. I didn’t matter what the rest of the world thought of him. She knew his heart, and knew that, beneath the rough exterior, there was a gentle soul that just wanted to be loved. She broke through his exterior and found something beautiful. Love makes things beautiful. It takes a hold of something inside you, then radiates out. When people are loved and love back, you can tell in the way they look and act. They know that someone loves them, no matter how they look. And it changes them.
(Please Note: I know, and I’m positive my teacher knew, that many Disney stories are based off of fairy tales. That was beside the point, though.)
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