Exploring Female-Female Relationships in Disney’s Animated Features

Only 33 out of the 55 canon Walt Disney Animation Studios films pass the Bechdel test, a set of rules that dictate that, in order to pass, a film must A) have at least two named female characters who B) talk to each other about C) something besides a man. The test is sourced back to a 1985 strip from Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For titled “The Rule,” and is still used by feminists today as a baseline for how women are represented in a piece of media. The very first Disney animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, does pass the test, but few would make the argument that Snow White is a feminist piece. The movie does revolve around a conflict between two female characters who are agentive in their own rights. The conflict, however, does a disservice to both of them by suggesting that a woman’s beauty her most valuable asset. It can be interpreted that what makes The Evil Queen so scary is her intelligence, implying that an educated woman is a threat. Snow White herself, on the other hand, is still agentive even though her talents are more domestic. Upon finding the Dwarves, she does not expect them to provide for her on account of her being a princess. She offers her talents of cooking and cleaning as payment for having a place to live, representing her ability to adapt and provide for herself. The prince who saves her only makes two appearances, but by saving

Snow White he becomes central to the story. The Prince gets more credit for saving Snow White at the end of the movie than Snow White gets for saving herself when she is first put in peril. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves shows that passing the Bechdel test and having agentive female characters does not necessarily make it an inherently feminist film. As time goes on, Disney films continue to prove that a film needs to do more than pass the Bechdel Test to be good for women.

In a similar vein to 1937’s Snow White, 1950’s Cinderella also pitts women against one another. Cinderella is the first female-driven feature film produced by the studio after Snow White. The film followed an era of “packaged films,” compilations of lower-budget short films produced during World War II, none of which had main female characters. Cinderella reflects the United States’ sentiment of wanting women to return to domesticity as men were returning from war expecting to take back the job market. Cinderella is taken advantage of by her stepmother and stepsisters on account of them feeling threatened by her natural beauty after her father passes away. She is helped by her animal friends and Fairy Godmother to attend a ball at the castle, hoping for a night off from being a servant in her own house. Her beauty captures the attention of Prince Charming who ultimately rescues her from her situation. Cinderella is happiest when she has a man in her life to provide for her. When her father dies, her happiness is taken away, only to return when she is chosen by the Prince to be his bride, freeing her from her responsibilities. She was expected to work when her father passed away, leaving her, but when a male figure returned to her life she no longer needed to work for herself, mirroring the many women who picked up industrial jobs on the homefront while the men in their lives left them to fight overseas and implying that their happiness should have returned with their husbands and relatives. Cinderella also values male bravery over more feminine traits. When Cinderella’s animal friends are making her first dress for the ball, the majority of the sequence revolves around two male mice, Jaq and Gus Gus, as they go out to retrieve ribbons and beads from the stepsisters rather than on the female mice who make the dress itself. When talking to the mice, Cinderella almost exclusively talks to the male mice and makes it clear that Jaq is their unofficial leader, suggesting that even the animals in the kingdome need some kind of patriarchal hierarchy. Cinderella is praised for her kindness and empathy, but it is clear that she values her vanity above all. The women of Cinderella value their relationships with men over their relationships with one another despite the fact that they spend most of their time together, the company of a man is an upgrade from the company of other women.

1995’s Pocahontas is where the game changed for the Disney heroine. Following the success of Beauty and the Beast in 1991, Disney began to see the value of what is now the iconic Disney Princess romance. Pocahontas was the first Disney film about “a woman instead of a teenager,” as stated by Glen Keane, the film’s supervising animator. The film initially received backlash for its oversimplification of a true story for the sake of increased romantic appeal, overshadowing the progressive aspects of the film. Pocahontas is the daughter of Chief Powhatan and fears the possibility of being betrothed to one of her tribe’s top warriors, Kocoum, believing that his serious nature would not compliment her free spirit. Shortly after, she meets a British settler named John Smith and changes his views of the “savages” he and his men had traveled to the New World to conquer. The two fall in love and are willing to sacrifice themselves to convince their two parties not to fight. John Smith is shot and wounded in the process, so he must be rushed back to England for medical attention. He asks Pocahontas to join him, but she decides that her duty to herself and to her community is more important than her love for him. Unlike the heroines before her, Pocahontas turns to the other women in her life for advice. When Chief Powhatan first mentions the idea of her marriage to Kocoum, Pocahontas turns to her friend Nakoma to discuss her reservations about the idea. Pocahontas also turns to Grandmother Willow, a speaking willow tree, for guidance regarding both Kocoum and a dream she has that ultimately leads her to meeting John Smith. Pocahontas opens up about her relationship with John Smith to Nakoma and Grandmother Willow in confidence, trusting that they will keep her secret. Nakoma covers for Pocahontas the first time she escapes to visit John Smith, but when Pocahontas goes to meet him later that same night, Nakoma fears for her safety too much to keep it a secret any longer and seeks help from Kocoum. The women of Pocahontas not only talk to one another, but they communicate. They confide in and look out for one another, forming close bonds and not treating their friendships as placeholders until a romantic relationship comes along.

Pocahontas has a strong sense of self that is not seen in the Disney heroines before her. She is willing to stand up for herself to her father despite the fact that he is a leader in her community, and he respects her decision to not marry Kocoum and is willing to listen to her when she asks him to be more open-minded about the British. She also makes the decision to put her own wants and needs over the man she loves, deciding to stay in America when John Smith returns to England. Unlike the heroines immediately preceding her, Pocahontas does not sacrifice anything for a man she loves (Belle giving up her freedom for her father, Ariel giving up her voice for Prince Eric). Through her positive relationships with other female characters and her strong sense of self, Pocahontas separates herself from the female Disney characters before her and paves the way for the more feminist Disney heroines that come after her.

Eighteen years after Pocahontas, 2013’s Frozen became Disney’s feminist triumph. The film focuses on the relationship of two sisters, Elsa and Anna, as they see each other for the first time after their parents passed away in a tragic shipwreck on the day of Elsa’s coronation ceremony. In a fit of rage at her sister for wanting to marry the first man she meets, Elsa accidentally reveals her ice-wielding magic to the public and runs into hiding for fear of being thought of as a monster. Anna is the first person to volunteer to go out and rescue her, taking responsibility for her actions and realizing she needs to set things right with her sister. The film acknowledges one of the issues many people have with older Disney films by bringing into question the idea of a woman marrying a man so shortly after meeting them purely on account of them being a prince by having Elsa refuse to give Anna her blessing to marry Prince Hans at the beginning of the film and continuing to reference the gag throughout the duration of the film. This is brought to the extreme at the end of the film when it is revealed that Hans’ intentions for marrying Anna were not as pure hearted as he had initially let on, but that he wanted to take advantage of her naivete in order to take over her kingdom. By villainizing a prince, Disney was able to express to young girls that committing yourself to the first man who pursues you is not always the best option and that sometimes men do not have pure intentions for the women in their lives. Furthermore, the film explores the fact that romantic love is not the only kind of love that can have meaning. Though Frozen is not the first Disney film to touch on the importance of familial love, it is the first Disney Princess movie to have the act of love that saves the day not be a romantic gesture. Both Elsa and Anna are saved by actions of non-romantic love. Anna is saved by a snowman, Olaf, when she is trapped by Hans near the end of the film. He proclaims that “some people are worth melting for” in a heartwarming moment of self-sacrifice. Anna is saved by Olaf’s platonic expression of love. Immediately thereafter, Anna saves Elsa in a similar manner by jumping in front of Hans’s blade before he murders Elsa. This sequence is almost identical to a scene in Pocahontas where Pocahontas lays over John Smith before her father can kill him, saving his life, but Anna saved her sister as an act of familial love rather than an act of romantic love. By having acts of familial and platonic love be the prophesied “act[s] of true love” saved the day rather than the typical “true [romantic] love’s kiss” featured in many Disney princess films, Frozen teaches young girls that there is more to life than just romantic love and that platonic and familial relationships are just as valuable and magical as romantic ones. Frozen makes audiences reassess the formula of the typical Disney princess story, empowering women in the process.

When she first begins to break away from concealing herself, Elsa begins to strip her conservative attire in favor of a more sexual outfit, showing that as she becomes more comfortable with her power she is becoming more comfortable with her sexuality, freeing herself on multiple levels. Elsa reclaims her identity and begins to truly accept herself for who she is. In juxtaposition to the Evil Queen in Snow White, Frozen features a woman who is afraid of her own power. Elsa feels a need to conceal her magic and fears that if people know about her true power she will be viewed as a threat, such is the case with the Evil Queen. By the end of the film, Elsa feels accepted for her powers and realizes that she can embrace them rather than hide from her strengths. This not only shows viewers that a woman can be worthy of being in a position of power, but also that diversity should be celebrated. Elsa fears that because her magic makes her different she will be seen in a bad light, as is the case with real-life minority groups. Elsa is forced to “closet” the thing that differentiates her from the norm, leading many to interpret Elsa’s magic as a metaphor for homosexuality. Through the imagery of a sexual blossoming accompanying the stand-out song “Let It Go” as well as the use of magic as an extended metaphor for homosexuality, Frozen celebrates the sexuality of women and proves that there is a place for diversity in the world of Disney.

Over time, Walt Disney Animation Studios films have become an iconic part of American culture, with the image of the Disney Princess becoming an icon of its own. The message of beauty above all for female characters has gradually started to wean itself out of the Disney dialogue, and in its place we have seen female characters who blossom into their own individuals. From their very first film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Disney learned that a female-centric story line could grasp the attention of audiences. They relearned this lesson with The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, the films that sparked the Renaissance era of Disney films, and again with 2013’s Frozen, which is currently the most successful animated film of all time. However, outside of princess stories, Disney still has a complicated relationship with their female characters. In many of the studio’s films, we see a mother figure who is either deceased (Bambi), non-existent (Pinocchio) , or exiled (Dumbo). This trend is often falsely connected to an accusation that Walt Disney did not feel comfortable including mother figures in his films on account of him feeling responsible for his own mother’s death, despite the fact that films in production prior to her passing were the very films that established the trend to begin with. The fact of the matter is that Disney animators have had difficulty producing characters that are both human and female. Stories that center around non-princess female characters have a tendency to paint women in a bad light, such as the hot-headed Alice of Alice in Wonderland or Peter Pan’s demanding and jealous Wendy Darling. Despite the fact that all of the films mentioned in this essay (with the exception of Pinocchio) pass the Bechdel test, it is hard to argue that they are feminist features. In recent years, though, there has been a major shift in Disney’s understanding of women. Since the beginning of the 2000s, there has been a sharp increase of female-fronted Disney films. The Disney females of the twenty-first century are a diverse set of well-developed, human characters. Eleven years before Frozen took the world by storm, 2002’s Lilo & Stitch told the story of two sisters trying to cope after the loss of their parents. Lilo & Stitch is just one of the recent Disney features to center on a female protagonist of color, 2009’s The Princess and the Frog telling the story of a black woman, Tiana, and her dream of one day owning her own restaurant. Since 1950’s Cinderella, Disney has learned that female characters do not need to be vain and jealous to be interesting. Instead of pitting women against one another, in Pocahontas Disney showed the value of positive, healthy female-female relationships, both with friends as well as with mentors. Most recently, the Disney Princess learned that not only can platonic and familial relationships coexist with romantic relationships, but that they can exist independently from them in Frozen. Female-female relationships have existed in Disney films since the very beginning, but it has taken time for these relationships to become positive. By using Disney films as a lens, it becomes apparent that a piece of media needs more than just a conversation between females in order to be considered feminist. Though the Bechdel Test is a good baseline for female inclusion, it is only the beginning of the battle for realistic female representation.