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The Importance Of Expectations Of Love In Fairy Tales

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Throughout fairy tales, the expectations of beauty and romance that are woven into the story are absorbed by the children viewing them. Children pick up on these ideals and quite often try to translate them into reality. Fairy tales, such as the one’s produced by Disney, often contain a magical romance with characters as magically beautiful as their love. However, these high expectations of love, beauty and happiness are unobtainable in our everyday world and leave children disheartened that their expectations of their body-image and love have not attained these unreasonable standards as they grow older. These expectations of body image, love, and happiness stem from infeasible beauty standards, magical romance, and living happily ever after …show more content…
However, time and time again love is presented as an undying, pure, and true love. Children pick up on this attitude towards love and then presume love to be exactly how it is in the fairy tales, that they will have intense love at first sight in the most romantic of settings. However, this is far from the truth and children are presented with this faulty notion about love and take it for fact. This notion is shown by Alyssa Demorotski who stated, “After waiting for the day to meet her prince, the princess falls head over heels. This signals the girls that they will fall in love with a guy then presume to marry him when she is of age. When girls are older they want to find their true love then create their family,” which reinforces the fairy tale love stereotype that girls need to wait for their prince then fall immediately in love with him, with the reverse being true for boys(60). An example of this is seen in the story of Rapunzel, where she is locked in a tower and a romantic prince comes to rescue her, where they end up falling madly in love. An ideal of love passed through this story is that your dream prince will come find you or that if you are a male you should go find your princess idly waiting for you. The story of Rapunzel also adds to the idea that women should be passive and wait for their prince to come and take them far away and men have to go out and rescue their princess. Another inaccurate portrayal of love is true love at first sight, which is seen in the story of Sleeping Beauty, where Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip stumble upon each other and then fall madly in love at first sight. “This also sends the message that when a man and woman meet, they instantaneously fall in love. No time is needed to elapse and no other common factors need to be in place in order for love to form,” which is a misconception of love learned by

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