Over the last six months, I’ve burned through basically every form of entertainment at an alarming pace. True crime miniseries, dozens of hours of Bravo, every prestigious movie that I missed from the last decade—you name it, I’ve probably watched too much of it in quarantine. But when I get to the bottom of my watchlist, or don’t feel like getting into another documentary about murder, Disney movies are always the perfect solution. Now that Disney+ is a thing, almost every classic animated movie is right at my fingertips, just waiting to be rewatched while I pretend to work spend my evenings at home.
Obviously, revisiting these childhood favorites is a lot of fun, but there are certain things that just don’t add up when you’re over the age of 13. No shade to Disney or whatever, but some of their movies low-key make no sense. Okay—maybe some shade. From cringeworthy details to plot holes that definitely shouldn’t have made the final drafts, here are some of the most burning questions I have about Disney movies.
Why Are The Princesses So Young?
If you want your day ruined, I just found out that Snow White is supposedly 14 years old living in a house with 7 strange men
— Betches (@betchesluvthis) September 22, 2020
The other day, one of my coworkers informed me that Snow White is supposed to be just 14 years old, and after recovering from my initial disgust, I felt the need to do some Googling. Turns out, every single member of the official Disney Princesses lineup is a teenager! While Snow White is the youngest at 14, she’s not the only one who’s a little too mature for her age. Princess Jasmine is just 15; Ariel, Aurora, Mulan, Moana, and Merida are 16; Belle is 17; Pocahontas and Rapunzel are 18; and Tiana and Cinderella are 19. Keep in mind, these are almost all fictional characters, so there’s literally no reason why they need to be so young.
While all of these princesses have different experiences in their respective stories, besides Merida and Moana, they’re each either married or happily coupled up by the end of their movies. What’s with the child brides? At least Snow White is an 80-year-old movie, but with characters like Belle and Jasmine, Disney was still doing this sh*t in the ’90s! Ew! In recent years, Disney has worked to bring more racial and cultural diversity into this group, and introduced Princesses whose stories don’t revolve around finding a man, but this age distribution is another problem they should probably look into addressing.
Why Does Pocahontas Speak English?
There’s a lot of problematic stuff happening in Pocahontas, but hey, at least our main character is 18! Pocahontas is the only Disney Princess to be based on a real person, but that doesn’t mean her story doesn’t come with its own set of baffling plot holes. In the movie, we see John Smith coming over from England, and he’s the first white person Pocahontas ever sees. While they both teach each other some words in their respective native languages, they have no actual trouble communicating with each other, because Pocahontas conveniently already speaks English! Obviously, I get why Disney didn’t want to make a kids movie where half of the dialogue was in an extinct Native American dialect, but they definitely could have tried a little harder to portray the language barrier that these two would have had at first. And for a movie that already has some cringeworthy Eurocentric imagery going on, the fact that everyone magically speaks English isn’t helping.
Why Doesn’t The Prince Recognize Cinderella?
Okay, let’s talk about Cinderella. Great movie, love the mice, really identify with the stepsisters, etc. But I just will not allow us to act like the whole part about Prince Charming searching for his mystery woman makes any sense. This dude was traipsing all around the kingdom, making literally any woman he came across try on this glass slipper (we’ll get to that in a minute). I feel like this was a huge waste of time. Did he remember absolutely nothing about what Cindy looked like? Sure, her hair was in an updo, and she was wearing a pretty gown, but it’s not like the Fairy Godmother gave her a face transplant or anything. Here’s the completed makeover look:
Really, Prince Charming? She’s not even wearing one of those dumb little masks like in A Cinderella Story—there’s no disguise happening here! If people only recognized me when my hair was freshly washed and I was wearing fancy clothes, I’d be in big trouble. Did Prince Charming black out and only remember that he was in love, but not a single identifying characteristic about the girl he was obsessed with? There’s just no reason anyone who wasn’t a skinny blonde should have been trying on that nasty shoe in the first place.
WTF Size Shoe Does Cinderella Wear?
Apparently I just have a lot of feelings about Cinderella. Who knew. So, about that glass slipper. Aside from the obvious sanitary issues with dozens (hundreds? thousands??) of people trying on the same shoe in a time when Clorox wipes definitely didn’t exist, the logic of this whole thing makes absolutely no sense. For this ~search~ to actually have happened, Cinderella would need to have either the world’s largest foot or the world’s smallest foot, and for someone with such a perfectly proportioned cartoon body, that just doesn’t seem likely. Let’s just say Cindy has a size 6 foot. What if the Prince had gone to the house of literally any other woman with a size 6 foot before Cindy’s? He would have just married the wrong woman? Was the slipper enchanted so it wouldn’t fit on anyone else’s foot? I know this is a fairytale, and I’m overthinking it, but that’s basically the whole point of this article, so let me live.
Why Didn’t Ariel Just Write Sh*t Down?
There are lots of unrealistic things happening in The Little Mermaid, but I’ll just accept that most of it is ~Disney magic~. But there’s one plot hole so glaring that I can’t just let it slide. When Ariel decides to make the deal with Ursula to get her legs, she signs her name on a contract. Yet later, when her voice is gone and she’s desperately trying to signal to Prince Eric that she’s the one he loves, it never occurs to her to just find a piece of paper and write it down. Or she could have written a message in the sand! Come on girl, be resourceful! There are truly so many ways she could have gotten her point across in writing, but nope, she just watched as her true love was nearly seduced by Ursula. Ariel may not have had a voice, but did Ursula also take her brain?
I know these princess fairytale movies aren’t exactly supposed to be realistic, but in my opinion, magic and enchantment only go so far. In general, I feel like the screenplays of all of these movies could’ve used one more draft to smooth out some of the inconsistencies, but clearly Disney isn’t that concerned. But please, for the love of god, stop making all the princesses so young!
Images: Fer Gregory / Shutterstock; Giphy (3)
As young betches, after we realized boys don’t really have cooties, but before we realized that they’re actually all just fuckboys who will ruin our lives, we enjoyed fantasizing about being whisked away by a certain type of bro. This group of bros provided us constant entertainment and were easy on the eyes—yes, I’m talking about the Disney princes. Every Disney movie had one, and they were all hot. Ah, the good old days. Because it’s totally normal to judge the physical attractiveness of a bunch of animated drawings, I’m here to rank the Disney princes according to their hotness level. I’m sure you’ll all have an opinion, so be sure to leave it in the comments section, which I definitely read.
10. The Prince
The Prince is the nameless prince in Snow White. He hardly speaks except for when he sings some lame-ass song about wishing for the woman he loves to come find him. Yeah, if love worked that way I’d be married with Shemar Moore’s kid by now. Talk about a delusional dater. Throughout the movie, he doesn’t do shit besides kiss Snow White and wake her up from a death-like sleep. Uhh, can you not? I was taking a nap. His presence in the movie is largely unnecessary, which is probably why they don’t even bother to give him a name. Last place.
P.S. Are you wearing fucking makeup, dude? Ultimate last place.
9. Kristoff
I’m sorry, Kristoff is not hot. What’s up with that goofy smile? And that vest? That vest is hideous. He has good hair and is like, a decent person, otherwise he’d be in last.
8. Prince Charming
Prince Charming is okay looking but he’s a fucking Nice Guy. Bruh, how low is your self-esteem that you spend all night dancing with a betch and don’t even ask her her fucking name?? Also, you definitely took the hard route finding Cinderella. You could have, like, asked a bunch of people if they knew anyone with her physical description, JUST SAYING. Also minus points for the probably foot fetish. Boy bye.
7. John Smith
YES I KNOW John Smith isn’t *technically* a prince, but he’s Pocahontas’ love interest so he fucking counts. Here’s the deal. He’s handsome, he’s got great hair, and he’s fucking British. That should be all the info you need. Except for the fact that Pocahontas wouldn’t even come with him back to England at the end of the movie, so he obviously has no game. So close, but not close enough. Seventh.
6. The Beast
He gets hot points because he’s rich, has a sick house, and is objectively attractive once you get rid of all the fur and stuff. But minus points because he’s a raging asshole—probably because he spent his entire adult life alone locked up in a fucking castle with only his kitchenware to talk to. I’d imagine that would take a toll on anybody’s personality. Regardless, that’s gonna point to some communication problems later on, I’m sure. Also he spends most of the movie as an actual beast, which certainly raises some bestiality questions to say the least.
5. Flynn Rider
Aka Eugene Fitzherbert, which incidentally is my accountant’s name. Flynn is like, a less hot and slightly more thug version of Aladdin, except he has a better pet. He’s fine, so he is precisely in the middle.
4. Aladdin
Aladdin is basically that guy with a shady past you dated for a while to scare your dad, but you’d never let him wife you. He hangs out with a literal monkey, FFS. However, Aladdin cleaned up well and showed Jasmine a whole new world, so you know he’s dynamite in bed. Solid fourth.
3. Prince Naveen
Naveen is definitely a regulation hottie. Tall, dark, and handsome with light-colored eyes? Swoon. Naveen is that confident, funny, attractive guy that every girl thinks is in love with them but really he’s just flirty with everyone. It wasn’t cute that he was content living as a frog with Tiana for a hot second, which is the only reason he’s not in first or second place. But since he got changed back into a human at the end so we’re all good here.
2. Li Shang
Shang is a hotshot army captain, and betches love a man in uniform. Plus, he’s fucking ripped underneath all that armor. Check out those abs! Shang doesn’t take shit and tbh, we need that. Even Mulan’s grandma thinks he’s sexy.
1. Prince Eric
Prince Eric is OBVIOUSLY the hottest out of all the Disney princes. The black hair/blue eyes combo sure is a winning one. And that smile, man. Is it weird to be attracted to a cartoon character? He may be kind of an asshole for almost marrying another betch like, one day after he met Ariel. Like, why were you in such a rush to settle down, Eric? Could you not just have waited it out? However, gotta give credit where credit is due. That was some solid game-playing, Eric. Major SAB move. For those reasons, but mostly because he’s fucking hot af, Eric takes the top spot.
While the “fuckboy” label has only existed for the past year or so, fuckboy behavior goes back centuries. Like, did Romeo really need to come into Juliet’s life and set fire to all of her most important relationships just so they could get married just so they could legally bone? Probs not. We here at Betches have explored many varieties of fuckboy who may have contributed to your subconcious desire to try and change them. (Fuckboys cannot be changed. They can only evolve into Fuckmen, run for President, and inexplicably win in spite of running against a much more qualified woman. This is called the “cycle of fuck” and it is currently ruining America. But that’s neither here nor there.) The worst of these are the Disney fuckboys, who weaseled their way into your brain at a very young and impressionable age to teach you that it is totally fine and not at all suspcious for a man you’ve barely met to tell you he loves you and kiss you while you’re sleeping. Like, if any of these dudes were transported into modern day, they’d never have time to marry a princess because they’d be too busy texting “U UP?” to anything with a pulse. While basically every male Disney character displays fuckboyish tendancies, the following 10 bros are the most responsible for the fact that you keep dating dudes who think Justin Bieber is an acceptable role model.
Read: 15 Signs You’re Dating A Fuckboy
1. Gaston
Gaston is such a fuckboy that it honestly feels like a cop-out to include him on the list. Like, he’s almost the TTH of being a douchebag, so much so that I don’t want to validate his efforts by including him on the list. Gaston is one of those dudes who always goes around bragging about how shitty he is to women, as if that’s a sign of anything other than the fact that he’s overcompensating for his micropenis. He only wants Belle because she’s hot and doesn’t want him, but you know he’s still texting all three of the blonde boob sisters on the side for validation. Gaston is literally every Tinder dude who called you a bitch after you didn’t respond to him for 5 minutes, and he hasn’t willingly read a book since that pickup artist manual.
2. The Genie
The Genie has all the marks of a traditional fuckboy: 1) he’s always shirtless, 2) he pretends like he can do anything, but when push comes to shove he can’t really do shit 3) he acts all fun and happy but he’s really deeply unhappy with the way his life is going. The Genie is all flash and no action. Like, sure he’s fun to hang out with, but at the end of the day he can’t make people fall in love or bring people back from the dead, and he’ll absolutely ghost you as soon as some other chick comes by and rubs his lamp the right way. Also, you can basically never go with him back to his place because it’s tiny and sucks ass.
3. Prince Eric
Prince Eric is so much of a fuckboy that when he meets a hot mute girl naked on the beach, he starts dating her, no questions asked. Dude clearly only has one priority when it comes to meeting a member of the opposite sex, and it’s not hearing her thoughts and opinions. Eric is a Prince, which means he’s rich and probably has not had a lot of people tell him “no” or “please don’t bring random homeless women who can’t speak into the castle” much in his life. Dude has no business ruling a country, let alone being a father, which is exactly why in The Little Mermaid II: Return To The Sea King Eric dips as soon as shit gets rough. Like, you seriously can’t even be bothered to help your wife find your daughter who is missing in the ocean? You’re really just gonna show up at the end to fight Ursula’s sister like you’ve been helping the whole time? Total fuckboy move.
^This looks like the smile of a fuckboy who’s planning his latest way to screw a woman over. Just saying.
4. Prince Ali
Aladdin is cool, but Prince Ali is a fucking scrub. You know, and I know, and especially Princess Jasmine knows, that any dude who rolls up looking this flashy for a first date is probably poor AF in real life. He just borrowed that elephant and clothes from his homie who has a real job, and as soon as you commit, he’ll be back to stealing from street vendors and sleeping in an abandoned building. And like, sure, he has a dope ride, but this dude is shady and a liar. You know Prince Ali’s online dating profile shaves like, 5-10 years off his age and says that he’s an “entrepreneur.” Stay away.
5. Flynn Rider
Flynn Rider is the type of fuckboy who really took the whole “he’s mean to you because he likes you” thing from elementary school waaaaayyy too seriously. Like, dude obviously had a boner for Rapunzel the moment he saw her, but he pretends to be all annoyed by her presence, as if he wouldn’t totally lose his shit if she rode off on an adventure with some other dude. He’s also very into illegal activities, meaning that dating him comes with an 80% chance of having to spend your whole paycheck on bailing him out of jail once a month. Yeah, he’s hot, but is his hotness worth finding out that he’s been running a drug cartel out of your living room when you’re at work? Def not.
6. Lumiere
Lumiere is the most DTF character in any Disney movie—potentially any movie—period. Any moment when Lumiere isn’t giving The Beast the most basic advice about how to hook up with Belle (Give her flowers! Be friendly! Let her eat!), he is low-key sexually harassing the feather duster. Like, I get that they’re both French and the feather duster appears to be down, but they are also at work. It’s not appropriate. Honestly, if their whole continued existence didn’t depend on her falling in love with The Beast, I’m fairly certain that Lumiere would have tried to slide up into Belle’s DMs. You can see it in his eyes during “Be Our Guest”. The entire time he’s thinking, “If this chick didn’t have to fall in love with my boss for me to get a functioning penis again, I would totally hit that.”
7. Prince Charming
Prince Charming is a fucking idiot. You spent all damn night dancing with Cinderella, and you’re gonna tell me you need a SHOE to figure out who she is? Why don’t you just have every woman in the kingdom text you a picture of their fucking FACE? Like, yeah Cinderella was all dressed up and shit for the ball but you should still be able to recognize her FACE. Like, is the implication here that if the shoe had fit one of the step sisters, he would have just married her, despite the fact that she looks and sounds nothing like the woman he spent all night dancing with? Prince Charming is clearly one of those dudes who just sees all women as a walking vagina. He asks no questions, and pays 0 attention to anything a woman says in his presence, which is why he couldn’t just approach these women individually and ask them literally any detail about the evening they spent together to confirm their identity.
8. Hans
Good Lord, where do I even start? Hans is one of the most dangerous varieties of fuckboy: the fuckboy who knows what he is doing. Most fuckboys do bad things because they did too many whippits in early high school and lack the brain capacity to understand their actions, but Hans is fucking smart. He knew exactly what he was doing by targeting Anna, clearly the stupider and the more desperate of the two sisters. Hans may have shown up to Arendelle to see if he could hit it with the new queen, but he took one look at Elsa’s “independent woman” vibe and knew there was no way he’d be able to get up to all his usual bullshit if she was his girl. That’s why he chose Anna—a girl so stupid she didn’t even realize that her older sister, aka the only friend she’s ever had in her life, has magical ice powers. Hans is the youngest of 13, meaning that he has a serious inferiority complex that you know he’s going to be bringing with him to any potential relationship. Dude is absolutely shady—possibly a sociopath—and will probably be trying to marry young, impressionable girls well into his 50s.
9. The Beast
Wow. A lot of Beauty And The Beast characters on here but, then again, Beauty and The Beast is a pretty troubling film. The Beast’s idea of “dating” involves trapping a woman in his house, asking her to dinner, and then screaming “IF SHE DOESN’T EAT WITH ME SHE’LL STARVE” when she says no. He’s absolutely the type of guy who flips out when you say that you want to use a condom, and blows your phone up with angry messages when you give him the courtesy of saying you’re not feeling it after he pays for your dinner, but only after he makes a 20-minute production about it, on one date.
10. Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is the OG Disney fuckboy masquerading as a nice guy. First off, he and Minnie have been dating for over 88 years, and yet they’ve never had a public wedding ceremony. And sure, Walt Disney says they’re married “in their private life,” but why not publicly? Seems like Mickey is trying to maintain a single image, in case some other hot young mousette comes along. That’s why he never wears his wedding ring. He’s keeping all his options open. Eventually, Minnie will get wise to this strategy and leave him, only to return a few years later with a Harvard Law student who says that he and Minnie had a common law marriage, which heretofore entitles her to equitable division of assets and that Minnie is granted full canine property rights and is taking Pluto, dumbass.
Honorable Mention: Walt Disney
Walt Disney was less of a “fuckboy” and more of a “racist lunatic who refused to hire women,” but it was his twisted brain that gave us all of the Disney related relationship/emotional/body confidence issues that plague us to this day. IDK if “props” are neceassirly in order here, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least recognize his considerable contributions to fuckboy culture.
