Beauty and the Beast: Friends should not be scary!

I had high tea at the Disneyland hotel yesterday. It was beyond lovely. We were at one of three tables seated in Steakhouse 55. They brought us three-tiered plates. The top had scones, the middle had cute fiddly little sandwiches, and the bottom had macaroons, mini pound cakes with buttercream roses. And the strawberries were dipped in white chocolate and decorated like Beast and Belle.

I went with two college girlfriends. We were all journalist majors together. They're smart funny people. One owns her own business she started in college, and the other has worked for the house of mouse (Disney) for over a decade in the technical writing department, leading many projects over the years. We discussed how we felt about Beauty and the Beast as girls, and as adults. All three of us were troubled by the hidden messages in the story, and how they affected the children who read them. Now, I love me some classic fairy tales, but this one troubles me. The same way that classic young adult and adult romances trouble me. They teach young readers to ignore their gut feelings.

This is super important! There is a part of you that is ancient. It's called racial memory or the lizard part of your brain. It's the reason most of the religions of the world remember a flood during ancient times, the reason we remember lions are dangerous, and that blue food is probably spoiled.

Because we are not stupid.

Society makes us stupid. Makes us believe in things that are not true.

If your gut tells you it's not okay, guess what?

It's not okay!!!

Beauty and Beast teaches us that aggressive angry people are just misunderstood, and need to be tolerated until they become less angry. 

WRONG!WRONG!WRONG!

It isn't your burden to fix other people. 

It's your duty to be honest, kind, and honorable.

But there are certain types of people who will latch onto that and suck all the joy out of you. They will expect you to fix them, to understand their unexpected outbursts of anger, and take the blame for their actions. They will tell you if you love them you'd do this.

That is a lie.

People who truly love you don't want to hurt you.

The first step is to truly love yourself. If you love you, you'd never let yourself be around people that hurt you.

I get it. It's hard. I wanted to be liked. I had some bad friends who used me. They'd ask me for things or to do things. When I didn't want to, they'd say "if you liked me, you would".

Not fair. Not cool.

Those are friends not worth having.

I know what it's like to feel like you aren't worth having good friends. 

Guess what?

You are worth having good kind friends. They shouldn't make you feel stupid or ugly. They shouldn't get you into trouble and walk away while you get thrown to the wolves.

It took me until my late 20s to finally understand that I would rather be alone than have people in my life that made me hate myself.

I'm hoping you guys catch on a lot quicker.

Love shouldn't make you feel gross, or stupid. It shouldn't make you act like a fool. Love should bring out your best, cheer you on, and delight in the weirdness that is you. There are tons of great people out there, nice people who will make great friends.You just have to promise you'll be a good friend back.   

Stories like to tell us we need to sacrifice everything for love, including dignity and self respect. That love is the only thing that matters, and you should be ready to die for real love. That someone who loves you will lie to "protect" you. That your great love is under a "curse" and can't tell you the truth, because some mountain witch will kill them. 

*sigh*

Oh honey, I'll tell you right now, real love, love worth having will not have all that drama around it. I've been married for sixteen years to someone I enjoy thoroughly. You know what I learned?

Real love is even tempered, kind, and doesn't have super high highs and really low lows. It's middle of the road, almost boring. That's what makes it great.