Happily Ever After?

            Love, that four letter word that seems to be the hardest thing to achieve but at the same time the answer to all our problems. Everyone wants love, that special someone to ride off into the sunset with or to save them from the evil dragon and be the hero. People are getting these ideas of a certain kind of love from how it is presented in movies such as Disney movies like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cinderella etc… The views of love shown in these movies can give someone unrealistic expectations about love and relationships. They may see Sleeping Beauty getting awakened from her nap with a kiss from a handsome prince and want that too. It could be anything that attracts that person. After one has watched and has decided that’s the love they want, they may wait forever for their prince charming. What if prince charming never comes in the way they want? Or if their Prince Charming ever comes at all? The love that is wanted may not be the love one gets. Love has its pros and cons but it does not come easy. Movies are ruining the way people view love, the kind of love they want and how they want it.

For starters in these Disney films they show ways of love that are very unrealistic. In almost every fairytale the women is doing everything she can to land her Prince Charming. That is the female’s main focus throughout the film. These films are telling us that in order for a woman to be happy she must find her prince. This can lead to a woman believing the only way to achieve true happiness is by having a man in her life. In the article, “How Disney ruined me for the real world” by Saba Khalid explains a number of ways in which Disney movies ruined her for the real world. One of those ways is, “The only reason Disney princesses breathe, eat, swim, sing, grow their hair, wear ridiculous clothing and shoes, is so that they will one day find themselves a good-looking prince. And once they do, all their problems in life are solved. That means if you don’t find a prince, or if yours happens to be on the ugly or on the less charming side, you’ll still be struggling all your life” (Khalid, 1) This is very true and is a terrible message to tell people. If a woman doesn’t find her prince she’s basically doomed.

These Disney films were not originally made out to be this way in the first place. The original stories are very different from the fairytales we know today. The stories that are based on the ones we know now were actually intended to warn children about the tough road ahead. These movies are based on those stories but were completely changed and made them into these happy fairytales that we know today. These movies that we have today display an unrealistic view of love. In the article by “How Walt Disney Ruined Our Love Lives” by Robert Epstein explains the unrealistic expectations these films give us about love and what these movies are actually based on that are completely different than the ones we know today. “Disney, you see, contributed to the failure of many marriages around the world. He did this by glamorizing and magnifying fairy tales that cause us — women, especially — to have unrealistic expectations about how successful romantic relationships are made and maintained” (Epstein, 1) This statement explains how these fairytales have given people an unrealistic view on love and how it works.

The after story of these fairytales never seem to be shown. We know it says they live happily ever after but is that it? What happens after that happily ever after? No one really know because no one is willing to tell it because it would ruin the idea of the story ending happily ever after. Also how the women are usually the ones taking all the risks in order to get Prince Charming while the male just sits around being rich, handsome and charming.

Work Citied/Annonated Bibliography

Khalid, Saba. “How Disney ruined me for the real world”. The Express Tribune with the International New York Times. 2 October 2012.

Various ways of what Disney films have taught us and how unrealistic it is. Some ways include the women must find a prince in order to be happy and have a fulfilling life and how old women and all things ugly are seen as bad or evil. I manly focused on how unrealistic the lessons learned from this article is. How can one follow these lessons learned from Disney despite how unrealistic they are.

Epstein, Robert. “How Walt Disney Ruined Our Lives”. Brandeis Magazine. Summer 2014.

The fairytales we know today are based on other stories that were taken and remade into something completely different. The true fairytales are no fairtytales at all they were actually intended to help girl through the tough road that lies ahead. Disney had other ideas when these stories were taken and turned into something else.

Kim, Jen. “What happens after happily ever after? Psychology Today. 22 February 2010.

No one really ever wonders what happens after they fall in love, get married and live happily ever after. This article shows images and share stories of what a photographer did as to what happened after their happily ever afters. Also shows how all the men in the movies have the same goal to be handsome, rich and charming while the females have way more going on.

Growing up without a parent can negatively affect a child’s ability to achieve happiness in their lives. There are many reasons for parents not to be present in a child’s growth, whether its due to death, an illness, divorce, or lack of time due to their jobs. All of these reasons have their own effects on children. The effects occur in the children’s personality, which could often be negative such as having: low self-esteem, lack of ability to socialize, inability to maintain relationships and so on. When the children’s personality is affected negatively, their ability to achieve happiness diminishes. This is the case with women who grew up with the emotional absence of their father. Research shows that women are specifically damaged in their ability to have healthy love relationships due to the absence of their father at some point in their life. Women are likely to have unhealthy love relationships due to insecurity: caused by the emotional absence of a father throughout childhood.

The benefits that a woman misses by the emotional absence of a father in her childhood are management of emotions, encouragement of risk taking, competition and more. According to the article “Growing Up Without A Father: The Impact On Girls and Women.” By Bravada Garrett-Akinsanya. Fathers are essential for girls in their child development because they provide with a different type of nurturing. They focus more on teamwork and competitiveness. This different type of focus has an effect on the girl’s ability to manage emotions, intelligence and academic achievement. Fathers also are essential to provide with a sense of what self-control and teaches it to girls. Therefore if a girl does not receive this during her childhood development, when she grows older she will have difficulties with her personality by being insecure, having low self- esteem and being unable to recognize her self-worth.

Girls need to be taught by their father about men so when they grow up to women, they would be able to acquire healthy relationships. A blog that was posted in website “Love-Life Learning Center” created by Dr. Tom Jordan and his wife whose professions are in the field of psychology: states that fathers need to nurture their daughters in order for them to have a secure sense of themselves as individuals and as desirable women. However, if fathers do not provide with this type of nurturing then the daughters will have grief and will search for the missing father’s love somewhere else. A father also has the responsibility of advising their daughters about how men are, what they value, how they get to respect women and so on. This is how a daughter would have information in order to be able to look for their ideal man in the future. Although, if daughters cannot acquire this information and nurturing from their fathers due to their absence then they will fail to cultivate healthy relationships leading them to develop negative characteristics.

Not receiving the adequate nurturing and information of a father will lead a daughter to grow into an insecure woman. According to a paper named “ Fatherless Women: What Happens to the Adult Woman who was Raised Without her Father” By Gabriella Kortsch, Ph.D. She confirms that a girl sees her self-worth reflected in a father’s behavior towards her. Therefore a woman who was raised having a positive relationship with her father will be self-confident. However, the woman who lacked of someone to assure her self-worth will have a low self-esteem. Hence, making it more difficult for the woman with low self-esteem to overcome obstacles throughout her life. Moreover, Kortosch explains three types of love relationships that adult women would have if they experienced the emotional absence of a father. The first one is called “The multi-faceted arena of relationships” this is the type of relationships where women who don’t have a sense of validation for themselves tend to look for it by having sex with men until they think they found the “right” one that makes them feel accepted. The second one is “Marrying “Daddy” which is the type of relationship where women seek for older men wanting to find the father figure they never had. If the lover recognizes that the woman is going to go through a transformation that will make her into her own older woman, from daughter to woman then their relationship will be successful. However, if the man doesn’t recognize this transformation or doesn’t want to then he will respond negatively to the woman and make her feel silly and even more less confident about herself. That would show that he just wanted to take advantage of the naïve, young woman he married to. The third type of relationships is “Avoiding engaging emotions” which is where women just avoid getting involved their emotions with men and so they decide to focus instead on their careers, taking care of others by serving them, serving to god, to their sister’s sons and daughters and so on. Also prostitutes who involve their body with men but not necessarily involving their feelings at all. Last but not least the woman who ends up having relationships with those who are married and which is convenient to her because she never really wants to commit either anyway.

Works Cited
Akinsanya, Brevada G. “Insight News.” Insight News RSS. N.p., 03 Nov. 2011. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.

Jordan, Tom. “Absent Father & His Daughter’s Love-Life.” LoveLife Learning Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.

Kortsch, Gabriella. “Fatherless Women: What Happens to the Adult Woman Who Was Raised Without Her Father?” Trans4mind. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.