The Single Worst Role Model for Young Girls

            Last March, a movie called Sucker Punch arrived in theaters. The movie starred a group of young women who beat up robots, samurais, zombies, dragons, and creepy guys with drawn-on mustaches. These girls fight while wearing wonderfully sexy outfits. I see nothing wrong with this. I rather enjoyed it, to be honest. However, a fellow student of mine at the University of Central Florida felt differently.

This student shared with me her disgust for Sucker Punch. She insisted that the females starring in it had set a terrible example for her impressionable, seven-year-old daughter. What a seven-year-old was doing in an R-rated movie is beyond me, but that’s not the point I’m working towards. The point I do wish to address is that when I asked my fellow student what movie she did consider a fine example for her daughter, she said without the slightest hint of hesitation, “Snow White.”

            Snow White? Was she kidding me? Snow White is, hands down, the single worst role model for any impressionable, young girl.

            For those six or seven people unfamiliar with its plot, Snow White is the story of a princess who has no redeeming qualities beyond her beauty (though I remain unimpressed) and her ability to not club to death every animal she comes across in the forest (what the hell was she doing in the forest, anyway?). She spends her existence singing about how, “Someday, my prince will come,” because she certainly can’t think of anything else to do with herself beyond marry the first dude who comes knocking and do whatever the hell he tells her to.

Jealous of Snow White’s beauty, her stepmother (who’s wicked—big surprise) orders this guy—who’s the “royal hunter” or some damn thing—to arrange an “accident” while taking Snow White out hunting with him. Think of him as the world’s very first Dick Cheney.
And it's not as if anyone would ask questions, right? I mean, the sweet, innocent princess goes off into the woods with some dude, and an hour later the dude returns, drenched in blood and without a princess. Who would raise an eyebrow?

            But the hunter “rescues” Snow White by not killing her. So does Snow White seek revenge against her stepmother? Does she ask to borrow the hunter’s pump-action Remington so that she can settle the score? Of course not. She does what the hunter tells her to do, which is run pointlessly deeper into the woods because that makes a hell of a lot of sense. So she unquestioningly does as she’s told, and, being a helpless, sniveling, pain in the ass, gets lost in the forest and weeps. So she is then rescued by deer.

            I’ll repeat that. She. Is. Rescued. By. Deer. Deer! They guide her to a cottage shared by seven dwarfs (because child services hadn’t yet been founded, I guess), and she follows the deer without question, lives with the dwarfs without question, does as they tell her without question, and proceeds to take no charge of her life, whatsoever.

            Then, the wicked stepmother (I don’t know why I’m bothering to specify which stepmother. Whitey only has one) tries to kill Snow White, who of course is helpless to defend herself because she has a sense of independence rivaled by most fetuses. Fortunately for her, Prince Charming happens by her funeral, sees her, and thinks, Hey. A corpse. I should kiss that. That would be totally charming. So his kiss resurrects her, and then he says, "Bitch, get your ass on my horse," to which she says, "Yes, sir." I don’t even think he asked her how she feels about the idea; I think she just sort of smiles and keeps her mouth shut.

            My point is that, violent as the girls in Sucker Punch might have been, and as disinterested in any sort of dress codes as they were, at least they made decisions for themselves. That might have been the whole point of the movie. Whereas in Snow White, the protagonist does nothing. She makes not a single decision and fails to evolve in any way during the course of her adventure.  She just falls helplessly from one man’s arms to the next (and those belonging to a deer or two). Snow White is the worst role model imaginable, and her singing sucks.