Lessons from ‘Frozen’s Princess Anna
There have been some great movies about sisters in the past, but Disney took it to a gigantic ice palace-y new level. People, myself included, are genuinely obsessed with Frozen, and rightfully so. The overall message of the film is the power of sisterhood, which ignited in me a feeling of girl power that I haven’t felt since my obsession with The Spice Girls in the late ’90s. I’ve seen gifs and blogs on the significance of Queen Elsa’s anxiety, yet a lot young girls can learn from Princess Anna as well.
It’s so easy to like and identify with Anna right away because she’s goofy and loves chocolate and sandwiches (that line in ‘Love is an Open Door’ is when she became my favorite character). She’s the irresistibly cute younger sister that you just can’t stay mad at, even when she wakes you up in the middle of the night. Anna doesn’t get a lot of attention growing up, so when a prince catches her from falling, it makes complete sense that she’d get a huge crush on him. This speaks to the nerdy girl’s soul, where we’re super stoked that a guy is FINALLY interested. I mean, how much you wanna bet that Anna’s a nerd? She had no one to talk to in her childhood, except paintings, so she probably read (we see a decent bookcase in the castle) and talked to adults most of her life.
Naturally, Anna falls for a guy after bumbling about the flirtation process, and though it’s an overdone convention, we expect it to work out between Anna and Hans. He’s the Disney prince! Of course he’s the right guy! He meets all of her high standards and expectations (“Picks his nose?” “All men do it.” “Excuse me, sir, he is a prince”). We’ve all been in that place where we like a guy so much that we believe him to be perfect. But, we learn through experience that’s not indicative of a successful or healthy relationship.
That’s why it’s so important that Elsa, the older sister, tells her that she can’t get married to someone after only knowing him for one day. To a lesser degree, this is like your sister or best friend telling you that you’ve only known the guy for two weeks, maybe you shouldn’t move in yet. I ingested so many Disney movies as a kid that it took me a long time to realize that while there’s no such thing as a perfect prince, there is such a thing as a guy with good intentions, like Kristoff. Hans is the Prince Charming turned Prince D-Bag, but Kristoff is the smelly weirdo turned sweetheart. Anna’s definitely the hero of the movie – she’s the one who goes on a quest and saves Kristoff, Elsa, and herself – but Kristoff tried his best to see that she was safe and happy. That’s a good guy.
So while Elsa teaches us about how to deal with anxiety and fear, Anna teaches us about love. The love of sisterhood is just as powerful, if not more, than romantic love. You have the ability to save yourself because that’s how full of love you are. The right guy for you may be grumpy at times and have an unusually strong attachment to his pet, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s too bad I didn’t have Frozen to binge-watch as a kid to drill these positive messages into my head, but I’m certainly making up for that fact. On to viewing number four….
Angela is an anglophile with severe addictions to sci-fi and sitcoms. Her idea of happiness is watching Netflix while eating burritos, though she also enjoys boxing training and reading. You can find her on Twitter because she’s still trying to figure out how Tumblr works.
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