Something Else Besides a Daughter?: Maternal Melodrama Meets Postfeminist Girlhood in Tangled and Brave - Johns ...

Something Else Besides a Daughter?: Maternal Melodrama Meets
   Postfeminist Girlhood in Tangled and Brave

   Katie Kapurch

   The Lion and the Unicorn, Volume 40, Number 1, January 2016, pp. 39-61
   (Article)

   Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
   DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/uni.2016.0008

       For additional information about this article
       https://muse.jhu.edu/article/621250

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]

Something Else Besides a Daughter?:
Maternal Melodrama Meets Postfeminist
Girlhood in Tangled and Brave
Katie Kapurch

Even Disney is bored with the prince. Snow White perched on a well,
wishing he would come. Sleeping Beauty waited for his redemptive kiss
to wake her up. Ariel traded voice and tail for the legs she hoped would
get his attention. But instead of hanging on for a lipped-locked happily
ever after with a charming man, twenty-first-century princesses Rapunzel
and Merida anxiously yearn for the warm, soft hug . . . of their mothers.
These daughters’ anxiety about the approval of their maternal figures
is just one emotional dynamic at work in Disney’s Tangled (2010) and
Disney Pixar’s Brave (2012). Both films depict mothers and daughters
locked in tender embraces, passionate quarrels, and tearful reconciliations,
presenting more complex visions of mother-daughter relationships than
any Disney-princess film before them. In doing so, Tangled and Brave
adhere to the generic conventions of the cinematic maternal melodrama,
representing—but also critiquing—contemporary discourses of girlhood
in this postfeminist moment.
   By showing the princess-daughters’ ambivalence and hysteria about
becoming independent women separate from their mothers, the films con-
front the problems of postfeminism for both girls and women. As Rosalind
Gill has influentially theorized, postfeminist media culture is comprised of
“interrelated themes” contradictorily promoting conventional femininity and
feminist subjects, which end up serving an overarching neoliberal ideol-
ogy that demands individual responsibility in the service of late capital-
ism. Gill details how postfeminist media consistently emphasize youthful
beautification as a means for empowerment, encouraging retrograde and
essentialist representations of gender and sexuality and, at the same time,
privileging middle-upper-class white womanhood. Disney’s princess media

      The Lion and the Unicorn 40 (2016) 39–61 © 2016 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

40    Katie Kapurch

has contributed actively to this postfeminist “sensibility,” as Gill terms it,
especially in girl culture.
   Beginning in the early 2000s, the studio sought to empower princesses,
who are granted some spirited wit and physical prowess, such as Mia in
The Princess Diaries. Hoi Cheu suggests Disney’s postfeminist films fail to
measure up to their “liberating” promises (55), which is the usual story in
postfeminist media culture—empowerment, but that which serves the forces
of hegemony. Princess Mia’s rough edges and frizzy hair are smoothed out so
that she can assume the duties of a rich Genovian royal. Even The Princess
and the Frog’s Tiana, partially progressive for her role as the first African-
American princess (see Lester, “Disney’s”), is a capitalist entrepreneur in
the end. With their spunky girl protagonists, Tangled and Brave do belong
to what Cheu calls “Disney’s ‘postfeminist’ revision” (55)—but the newer
films confront the pressures of postfeminism at the same time.
   Tangled and Brave are maternal melodramas, a generic association that
reveals the films’ reflection, negotiation, and confrontation with postfemi-
nism, especially as it informs the social construction of girlhood. Although
these films are produced by Disney, a media conglomerate not known for its
progressive expressions of gender, melodrama can work as a critical mode of
discourse even when shrouded in a conservative dress. In short, melodrama’s
excess allows for a critique of the very things melodrama represents. Paying
close attention to mother-daughter interactions, especially over Rapunzel’s
and Merida’s excesses of hair, reveal the following postfeminist themes as
debilitating for girls and detrimental to their relationships with older women:
normative femininity and consumerism as empowerment, competing genera-
tional feminisms, and the conflicting pressures to articulate individual identity
while belonging to female community.

               Maternal Melodrama, Postfeminism, and Hair

Tangled and Brave elevate female characters’ intimacy and its complex
emotional consequences while downplaying the prominence of the redemp-
tive prince. Brave was even “inspired . . . into being” by the daughter of
film’s creator and co-director, Brenda Chapman, who credits the girl in her
Academy Award speech. These box-office successes established a tone sub-
sequent Disney films have followed. The massively popular Frozen (2013)
is essentially a family drama celebrating the love between sisters. Disney’s
Maleficent (2014) imbues the studio’s own animated Sleeping Beauty narrative
with a mother-daughter sensibility as the sorceress develops protective affec-
tion for the girl she regrets cursing. That kind of live-action mother-daughter
drama, reminiscent of the emotional conflicts in Tangled and Brave, has been

Maternal Melodrama Meets Postfeminist Girlhood in Tangled and Brave      41

replicated in another live-action Disney-revision-of-a-Disney-animation,
Cinderella (2015), featuring passionate interactions between women and
girls in a domestic setting.
   Clearly, Disney has recognized its success with such female-intimacy
narratives. These films all offer more complicated and sympathetic visions
of mothers as female antagonists (formerly the “wicked stepmother”), as
well as the plight of the girl who struggles to assert herself beside a control-
ling and dominant mother (or sister in Frozen’s case). Such expressions of
intimacy may appear to be, on the part of Disney as a studio, a radical turn
away from heteronormative romance and toward female community. But
the contemporary films’ adhere to the maternal melodrama through their
expression of female intimacy and emotion, which rend sympathy from the
audience. This film subgenre, whose cinematic heyday was the mid-twentieth
century, is outwardly conservative: it demands women and girls stick to social
roles (namely mothers) that serve patriarchy. And yet, as film scholars such
as Linda Williams argue, the maternal melodrama is also progressive in its
very exposure of those emotionally fraught constrictions and contradictions.1
   Tangled and Brave uphold and transform the maternal melodrama, situating
the films within a generic tradition that allows us to see the Disney studio
responding to its contemporary moment. Disney films have always reflected
their historical circumstances: Cinderella’s domesticity and her uniform-clad
prince appealed to post-World War II America in the 1950s; Ariel’s struggle
with voice reflected the feminist concerns in the late 1980s; Mulan’s cross-
dressing achievement spoke to “Girl Power” initiatives of the 1990s. In this
century, Tangled and Brave both address the consequences of such Girl
Power rhetoric for girls and women in this “postfeminist” moment, when
feminism, as Angela McRobbie has famously noted, “is taken into account,
but only to be shown to be no longer necessary” (17). The vision of Girl
Power most often coopted and articulated by Western mass media reveals it
to be “one of postfeminism’s most potent expressions, seductively inviting
girls to be fun loving, sassy, and independent and self-pleasing” (Jackson
and Westrupp 358). As a postfeminist discourse of girlhood, commercialized
Girl Power (epitomized by the 90s girl group, the Spice Girls) encourages
girls’ empowerment and friendly sisterhood—but within a narrow path that
demands conventional femininity and sexual desire, along with consumer-
oriented agency.2
   Transforming the princess narrative into what is basically a maternal
melodrama shows that women and girls are struggling to juggle postfeminist
demands, specifically competing generational feminisms, economic pressure,
and familial social demands related to the performance of femininity. As
such, Tangled and Brave encourage sympathy for mothers’ and daughters’

42    Katie Kapurch

perspectives at once. Canonical maternal melodramas typically feature a
mother who sacrifices3 for the benefit of her children, often an unappreciative
daughter onto whom the mother’s ambitions are projected. Mothers work
to improve personal social and economic conditions, their own and that of
their daughter, especially through work outside of the home—although these
daughters usually resist their mothers’ help. Confined by the intimacy, the
girls are often unable to understand their mothers’ perspectives, and, as Wil-
liams recognizes, “embroiled in a relationship that is so close, mother and
daughter nevertheless seem destined to lose one another through this very
closeness” (300). The mother suffers varying degrees of punishment for her
efforts, usually resulting in the daughter’s success or realization about her
mother, whose literal or symbolic death redeems her (300). In short, in the
classic maternal melodrama, “bad” mothers with too much ambition become
“good” mothers in their suffering or death, which often ends up facilitating
the social or economic success of the daughter (see also Kaplan).
   Although the recent Disney films still showcase stifling mother-daughter
intimacy and the sacrificial-mother paradigm, Tangled and Brave elevate the
daughter characters’ points of view, which are afforded the kind of narrative
primacy the mothers’ perspectives are given in canonical film “weepies” such
as Stella Dallas (1937), Mildred Pierce (1945), and Imitation of Life (1934;
1959). The title character of Stella Dallas, for example, is a social climber
who yearns to be “something else besides a mother” and is ultimately cen-
sured for it. In such classic film examples, the maternal melodrama exposes
women’s social constraints, especially through depictions of women’s am-
biguous relationships to mothering, an idealized subject position that serves
patriarchy and places impossible demands on women (Williams). Although
they still depict adult women’s constraints, Tangled and Brave privilege the
representation of the daughter’s ambivalence and emotional frustration.
   Tangled’s Rapunzel and Brave’s Merida each struggle to articulate them-
selves as “something else besides” a daughter and are simultaneously censured
and rewarded for that ambition. In these twenty-first-century Disney films,
a girl’s struggle to assert her identity is central to the narrative, unlike the
focus on the mother in “classic” film maternal melodramas. The new prin-
cess films still define “good” and “bad” mothering, partially reversing the
generic conventions of bad mothers (such as Stella Dallas) being punished
for their nonmaternal ambitions. Rapunzel’s and Merida’s rejection of their
mothers’ rules structurally reflects postfeminism’s concurrent accommodation
and rejection of the feminist movement. As Kathleen Rowe Karlyn argues,
postfeminism reproduces the maternal melodrama’s impulse to sacrifice the
“mother” (i.e., feminism of the past): “Melodrama . . . is well suited for
exploring postfeminist themes, especially when cast in terms of rejecting

Maternal Melodrama Meets Postfeminist Girlhood in Tangled and Brave     43

the Bad Mother and her baggage” (35). Rapunzel’s and Merida’s inability
to understand their mothers’ perspectives resembles generational differences
between second-wave and third-wave feminists, especially “girlies” who reject
the “seriousness” of their mothers’ feminism (Baumgardner and Richards 80).
In Tangled and Brave, however, this interpretation is complicated by the fact
that Mother Gothel and Elinor often enforce conventional feminine values
consistent with postfeminist media culture. In these contemporary Disney
films, as in canonical maternal melodramas, “bad” mothering is still defined
as showering too much attention on the daughter; in Tangled’s and Brave’s
cases mothers smother the girls’ physical bodies because hair is a primary
site of maternal control in a domestic setting.
   Rapunzel’s and Merida’s 3D animated abundant hair4 becomes a physical
avenue for mother-daughter intimacy, as well as a space to work out extreme
and contradictory feelings. Hair is a signifier and a material appendage to
struggle with on its own, a lived experience5 reflected in Tangled and Brave
through mother-daughter melodrama. Neal Lester recognizes the real-life
pressure on mothers to mother “correctly” via hair in his essay, “Rapunzel,
Rapunzel, Let Down Your Golden Hair.” Lester offers a poignant critique of
mediated pressure on African-American mothers to use chemical relaxants
on their young daughters: “The rhetorical ploy that associates straight and
relaxed hair care with “good” mothering tugs at the emotional and spiritual
bond between African American mothers and their young daughters.” Through
her hair, the child is a reflection of the mother and evidence of her care, the
exact theme relevant to mother-daughter mirroring in the maternal melodrama.
In the newer Disney films, mother characters are also wielding power over
their daughters’ hair in order to exert influence over the girls.
   In Tangled and Brave, mother-daughter conflicts over hair are symbolic
struggles over a girl’s future, a motif available in ATU 310. This tale-type,
“The Maiden in the Tower,” involves a characteristic tower-imprisonment
lorded over by an older woman and interrupted by a young man, a story that
reflects historical anxieties about guarding girls’ “chastity during puberty”
(Zipes 51).6 Tangled, whose filmmakers’ acknowledge the Grimms’ version
as their source, replicates the tower-dwelling and hair-climbing of “Rapun-
zel” predecessors. Brave, the story of a girl fighting against her parents’
expectations that she marry to preserve the peace of their Scottish kingdom,
incorporates “Will o’ the Wisp” 7 folklore present in the oral tradition of the
United Kingdom. In spite of Brave’s much looser association with ATU 310,
the unwieldy abundance of Merida’s hair, which her mother attempts to control
in their castle dwelling, means that the Disney Pixar film still upholds much
of the emblematic associations of Rapunzel’s hair.
   In her many folkloric and literary incarnations, Rapunzel’s identity is con-
nected to the visual confinement and release of her hair, an object to which

44    Katie Kapurch

the older woman lays claim. While Rapunzel’s virginal8 hair has been a source
of oppression when she pulls the sorceress into the tower, her hair is also a
method of resistance: “she lets her hair down—literally—to find a way out
and a new life” (Warner 375). The duality of hair as a source of maternal
constraint and a girl’s resistance, as well as a site of intimacy between female
characters, is replicated in both Tangled and Brave. Similar to their folkloric
predecessors,9 the newer films’ representations of hair reflect their contem-
porary moment, specifically postfeminism, whose regressive messages lurk
under the guise of so-called female empowerment. These contradictions are
exposed through Tangled’s and Brave’s adherence to the maternal melodrama.

               Little Girls and Their “Good”/“Bad” Mothers

Through its female characters’ interactions with hair, both films establish
mother-daughter intimacy, as well as “good” mother/“bad” mother duality, in
prologues that depict Rapunzel and Merida as little girls. Tangled’s prologue
is voiced over by the bandit Flynn Rider, who offers the backstory of which
Rapunzel is unaware at the beginning of the film. Flynn’s point of view in
the voice-over is perhaps surprising in a narrative one might expect to begin
from the protagonist Rapunzel’s perspective. But the dramatic irony allows
the viewer to know more than Rapunzel, inclining the audience to sympathize
with and root for her discovery of her true identity, an empathetic response
consistent with melodrama’s capacity to champion the powerless (Vicinus
128). And Rapunzel’s powerlessness is accentuated by the lack of agency she
has over the circumstances of being born, which results in her kidnapping.
Rapunzel’s birth mother’s illness motivates the king (who, like his wife, is
gentle but silent, never actually speaking in the film) to extract the essence
of a magical flower to heal his pregnant wife. When she sips the potion, the
flower’s restorative powers—formerly harnessed by Mother Gothel to keep
herself youthful and alive—are transferred (in utero) to Rapunzel’s hair,
immediately establishing the connection between hair and mothering. In the
next image, the still mute and gentle queen holds the baby Rapunzel on her
birthday, which is commemorated with lanterns cast into the sky; mother and
daughter look alike apart from their hair colors, a soft brown for the queen
and a sunny blonde for Rapunzel.
   The demure, youthful queen is such a contrast to the theatrical, mature
Mother Gothel, who seems as though she has walked out of a film noir
“weepie” such as Now, Voyager or Mildred Pierce. Gothel’s raven hair, wide,
expressive eyes, and high cheekbones recall the defining features of Bette
Davis and Joan Crawford, lead actresses in those films—and the very influ-
ences on animators’ conception of Gothel (Das). Gothel, unlike the queen, is
active, swooping into the castle bedroom, recognizing Rapunzel’s enchanted

Maternal Melodrama Meets Postfeminist Girlhood in Tangled and Brave      45

hair, and singing the flower-spell for restoration: “Save what has been lost,
bring back was once was mine, what once was mine.” Realizing Rapunzel’s
hair loses its magic when cut, Gothel kidnaps the baby, absconding with a
dramatic flourish of her cape. The film immediately establishes the “good”
mother/“bad” mother split, especially through the physicality of the queen
and Mother Gothel. The queen is gentle and quiet, but her passivity after
discovering Rapunzel’s absence suggests she can survive independently from
the girl. Mother Gothel, as Rapunzel’s “unnatural” mother, is self-serving and
loud, but also entirely dependent on the girl.
   The intimacy hair facilitates between mother and daughter is even more
obvious when Mother Gothel assumes the role of Rapunzel’s mother. Seated
in front of the fire, Gothel brushes the unsuspecting child-Rapunzel’s hair,
glowing fluorescent as they sing the flower spell, which now sounds like a
lullaby shared between mother and daughter during a pre-bedtime ritual.
The audience may glean the double meaning of the song: Rapunzel’s true
parents are the lost “what” since Rapunzel knows no other mother than
Gothel. As she strokes the immense lengths of Rapunzel’s hair, Mother
Gothel’s wrinkles smooth and her gray, frizzy hair darkens into lush curls,
a change that visualizes their codependence. Indeed, in their secluded tower
domesticity, Mother Gothel appears tenderly devoted to Rapunzel—posi-
tioning herself as a sacrificial mother who braves the outside world to keep
Rapunzel safe inside. Even so, the maternal melodrama’s generic capacity
to encourage viewer sympathy with multiple points of view complicates the
Mother Gothel-Rapunzel relationship.
   The poignancy of the “false” mother-daughter intimacy augments the vil-
lainy of Mother Gothel’s kidnapping—but it also presents another side of
Mother Gothel, who projects affection for Rapunzel, or at least her hair. Ra-
punzel asks, “Why can’t I go outside?” Mother Gothel answers: “The outside
world is a dangerous place filled with horrible, selfish people. You must stay
here where you’re safe. Do you understand, flower?” Mother Gothel’s pos-
sessiveness is selfish, but she is not entirely unsympathetic. After all, Mother
Gothel preserved the flower in its natural setting, whereas the king captures
it for a personal one-time use. When Mother Gothel steals Rapunzel, from
her point of view she is reclaiming “what once was [hers]”— and offers the
same protection to Rapunzel that she once offered the flower. Interpreted
through the lens of the maternal melodrama, this scenario suggests mother-
daughter intimacy is a reaction to and defense against injustice. Yet, treating
Rapunzel as if she is a redemptive object denies the girl’s humanity, so these
competing sympathies are not easily reconciled.
   Although Queen Elinor is not Mother Gothel’s type of duplicitous, Brave
nevertheless establishes the passive mother/active mother duality during its
prologue, beginning with the picnic celebration of the child-Merida’s birth-

46    Katie Kapurch

day—when Elinor is a good mother. Akin to Mother Gothel, who affectionately
devours the magic of Rapunzel’s hair, Elinor’s attention is devouring, albeit
playful. As they play hide and seek, Elinor pretends to wonder, “Where is
my little birthday girl, hmm? I’m going to gobble her up when I find her!”
When she catches Merida, Elinor says, “I’m going to eat you!,” clutching
the girl on her lap and burrowing her face in her daughter’s abundant hair,
a site of mother-daughter intimacy as in Tangled. Merida’s red, bouncing
curls are a visual contrast to Elinor’s smooth dark-brown hair, but these hair
differences are not yet divisive.
   Characteristic of the maternal melodrama, mother-daughter tranquility is
disrupted by the intrusion of patriarchal forces, often embodied by a father
character (Kaplan). In Brave’s case, Elinor and Merida’s closeness is inter-
rupted when the red-haired King Fergus enters the scene. His body is pre-
ceded by a close-up shot of his large (phallic) bow, which prompts Elinor’s
admonishment: “Ach! Fergus, no weapons on the table!” Even though King
Fergus is good-natured and supportive of his daughter (especially her passion
for adventure), he is also oblivious. He gives Merida her own small bow, a
present to which his wife did not agree. Elinor hides her disapproval from
Merida in this scene, but the bow will create later conflict between them, just
as Merida’s fiery hair—which she has also inherited from her father—will
become a divisive issue. Thus, in addition to establishing mother-daughter
intimacy, the prologue establishes Merida’s paternal associations, which her
mother will later try to manage or erase. Seen in the context of the maternal
melodrama, Elinor’s transference of energy to Merida is the same strategy
Mother Gothel uses for coping under patriarchal rule: while Elinor has little
power to change her husband and the larger political structure, she does have
control in the personal relationship with her daughter.
   Tangled sets up a contrast between passive good-mother and active bad-
mother through two different mother characters. But at the end of Brave’s
prologue, Elinor’s physical protectiveness over Merida combines Rapunzel’s
birth mother’s tenderness and Mother Gothel’s powerful corporeality. When
the prince-turned-bear Mor’du, attacks the picnicking family, it is Elinor
who, galloping capably on horseback, saves Merida; Fergus stays to fight
the villain, losing part of his leg in the struggle. Later, when Merida acciden-
tally turns her mother into a bear with a “gammy spell,” Merida remembers
Elinor’s protection and comfort, mourning the loss of this good mother, the
Elinor who did not restrain Merida’s hair or dictate royal responsibilities.
The presentation of positive and negative qualities in one mother renders
Brave’s representation of mother-daughter intimacy more complex than the
stark contrast Tangled offers in its two mothers. Still, both films communicate
mother-daughter closeness through hair as a point of intimacy, which will

Maternal Melodrama Meets Postfeminist Girlhood in Tangled and Brave     47

be fractured once Rapunzel and Merida are reintroduced as teens yearning
for independence.

             Teen Daughters, Stifling Mothers, and Girl Power

Following the prologues, the teen protagonists, whose hair is now even more
abundant, introduce themselves to the audience. Rapunzel (through song) and
Merida (through voice-over) summarize their lives and their major dilemmas:
their mothers, whose rules are stifling. When the almost eighteen-year-old
Rapunzel is alone in her tower, she sings “When Will My Life Begin.” Ac-
companied by a succession of complementary images, the song catalogs her
daily routine, which begins at “7 a.m.” and includes chores, hobbies, physical
exercise, and personal grooming, especially brushing her hair. Rapunzel’s
constant vigilance reflects the postfeminist obsession with maintaining the
feminine body: “The body is presented simultaneously as women’s source
of power and as always unruly, requiring constant monitoring surveillance,
discipline and re-modelling (and consumer spending) in order to conform to
ever-narrower judgments of female attractiveness” (Gill 149). Even though
Rapunzel is not just concerned with brushing her hair since she reads, paints,
cooks, knits, and plays chess, her long locks are involved in these self-
improvement tasks, such as when she uses it as a pulley to hoist herself up
to paint a top portion of her “gallery.” Characteristic of postfeminist media
culture, this girl’s “success” is connected to her conventionally feminine
body, aided by all of the products presumably purchased and delivered by
Mother Gothel.
   Tangled reflects a postfeminist sensibility through Rapunzel’s “hair power,”
but the film also confronts pressures on girls to work relentlessly for self-
improvement. After all, hair is a roadblock Rapunzel has learned to navigate;
she weaves around it in coordinated movements, but when she tries ballet,
for example, she gets wound up and falls over. The hair is magnificent, but a
burden, as is its blondeness, which carries all sorts of cultural baggage about
goodness and naiveté.10 Indeed, “Blondie,” Flynn’s nickname for Rapunzel, at
first rings with assumptions that she is a “dumb blonde.” Just like her stun-
ning, but burdensome hair, Rapunzel’s activities are fun, but not fulfilling.
At the end of “When Will My Life Begin,” she exhaustedly drags the brush
through her hair: “and then I’ll brush and brush and brush and brush my hair
/ stuck in the same place I’ve always been.” As the song climaxes, Rapunzel
throws piles of her hair up into the air, and an overhead shot reveals a girl
encircled by this maze. Adhering to melodrama’s conventional depiction of
claustrophobic spaces that trap heroines hoping for relief, Tangled features
Rapunzel, surrounded by her hair, lyrically proclaiming, “when will my life

48    Katie Kapurch

begin?” The tune turns suddenly melancholy as the melody slows; Rapunzel
returns to the window, pondering the birthday lanterns she has drawn in a
mural: “What is it like out there where they float / now that I’m older Mother
might just let me go . . .” She trails off, the last lines revealing her true feel-
ings about Mother Gothel’s confining rules.
   As her song illustrates, Rapunzel is lively and girlishly feminine, exerting
the desire for adventure—goals illustrative of Girl Power as a postfeminist
discourse of girlhood. Rapunzel defends herself, knocking out Flynn with
her frying pan and using her hair to restrain him, which gives her time to
contemplate her options. Just like folkloric and fairy-tale predecessors before
her, Rapunzel has never seen a man; unlike those predecessors, Rapunzel
does not immediately fall in love (and into bed) with him. Rapunzel also
shows some Girl Power spunk when she defies her mother’s tower lockdown,
using her hair to launch herself away from the tower and other dangerous
situations—and later to heal Flynn’s bleeding hand. She accomplishes all of
these tasks with the help of hair that suggests feminine abundance. And yet
Rapunzel is still not a perfect representation of Girl Power since she consis-
tently doubts herself. When she first leaves the tower, she vacillates manically,
swinging from indecision to joy to fear about letting Mother Gothel down;
this hysterical excess is another way Tangled critiques its own postfeminist
sensibilities through maternal melodrama.
   Merida is a fun and adventurous princess, but she lacks Rapunzel’s girlie
femininity. Similar to Tangled’s protagonist, Brave’s teen heroine introduces
her desire to get away from the castle and her mother’s rules. Merida’s
voice-over, accompanied by an aerial view of the misty mountains, sets up
the fateful events of the film: “Some say our destiny is tied to the land, as
much a part of us as we are of it. Others say fate is woven together like a
cloth, so that one’s destiny intertwines with many others. It’s the one thing
we search for, or fight to change. Some never find it. But there are some who
are led.” Foreshadowing the magical will o’ the wisps Merida later follows,
these lines suggest a community orientation consistent with postfeminist
discourses of girlhood that value the camaraderie of distinctive individuals.
Again, the Spice Girls are a definitional example; even though they are a band
of girlfriends, each girl had a distinctive identity (e.g., “Scary Spice” or “Baby
Spice”). Merida’s voice-over is also suggestive of generational feminisms,
whose differing strategies and goals are woven together in the present day.
   After the cosmic insight of Merida’s voice-over, Brave continues to posi-
tion its protagonist as an unconventional girl. Through more voice-over and
its accompanying images, Merida introduces her young triplet-brothers, “wee
devils,” who have red hair like her, but whose enviable freedom to play
pranks is afforded by their sex and birth order. Wooden doors open to reveal

Maternal Melodrama Meets Postfeminist Girlhood in Tangled and Brave     49

the back of her head, a magnificent mass of red hair. Caught off-guard tak-
ing a large and sloppy bite of apple, she wipes the juice with her sleeve and
feigns a dignified walk that does not impress the scowling Elinor. Merida’s
voice-over explains: “I can never get away with anything. I’m the princess.
I’m the example. I’ve got duties, responsibilities, expectations. My whole
life is planned out—preparing for the day I become, well, my mother! She’s
in charge of every single day of my life.” Comparable to Rapunzel’s song,
Merida’s voice-over hones in on her stifling mother as the source of the
girl’s oppression.
   Merida’s untamed hair punctuates her frustrated feelings and inelegant
movements, especially when she flops exasperatedly into the chair next to
her groomed and braided mother. Merida’s long, very thick hair reaches down
her back; un-brushed and wild, the strands vary in color from deep red to
blonde highlights, which add texture to the assortment of curls, which range
from smooth to frizzy. The 3D animation augments the independent, floating
movement of certain curls, immediately granting Merida an unruliness incon-
sistent with the groomed femininity projected by her mother. Apart from one
gray streak that suggests a tendency to worry, Elinor’s straight dark-brown
hair is unchanged since the prologue and, while also long and abundant, it
is gathered at the nape, braided with a gold ribbon, and topped with a small
golden crown. This hair articulates Elinor’s royal duty and attention to bodily
maintenance, reinforcing the contrast of Merida’s red-haired rebelliousness.
   Merida’s defiance of her mother’s feminine and royal identity is conven-
tional to the maternal melodrama, but the daughter’s perspective is privileged
in Brave. In a montage of short scenes that interrupts her voice-over, Merida’s
daily activities are cataloged. Elinor sounds like a stereotypical school marm,
announcing what a princess “does” and “does not” do, toiling to develop her
daughter’s academic knowledge and artistic sensibilities. Merida lacks inter-
est as she slumps in her chair or makes jokes, rebelliousness reinforced with
the bounce and flop of her unruly curls. Elinor responds to each inelegant
misstep with instructive correction: “A princess does not chortle!” and “A
princess does not stuff her gob!” The queen, determined to cultivate Merida
into the kind of princess Disney defined with Snow White and Cinderella,
would probably love for her daughter to have Rapunzel’s self-improvement
routine. Thus, while Rapunzel has adopted certain such postfeminist rituals
to alleviate her boredom, Merida rejects them outright. In fact, Brave’s por-
trayal of a princess who openly rejects conventional femininity enforced by
her own mother critiques the Girl Power femininity projected by Rapunzel.
After the oppressive princess instruction, Merida’s voice-over resumes as she
gallops through the Scottish forest shooting arrows and climbing mountains:
“But every once in a while, there’s a day when I don’t have to be a princess.

50    Katie Kapurch

No lessons, no expectations. A day where anything can happen. A day when
I can change my fate.” This carpe diem hopefulness is consistent with post-
feminism’s emphasis on the individual, but Merida’s red hair, swirling around
her like fire, accentuates her fierce passion for freedom from the gendered
prison of a career as a princess, as well as heterosexual partnership, which
subsequent scenes show.
   In fact, Merida’s appetite for unconventional, prohibited, and even dan-
gerous activities aligns her with the flip side of Girl Power: postfeminism’s
discursive “at-risk” girl. Unlike her “can-do” counterpart, the “at-risk” girl
displays “misaligned occupational ambitions” and an inability to control her
appetites (Harris 14). According to Anita Harris, these categories discursively
discipline girls, who are warned against “‘disordered’ patterns of consumer-
ism” that involve ingesting the wrong things in the wrong amounts: sex,
food, and other “‘laddish’” pursuits related to drugs, alcohol, and weapons
(28). Merida has a voracious appetite for food and is certainly attached to her
bow, which her mother reminds her is outside the feminine ideal: “A princess
should not have weapons, in my opinion.” And Merida’s out-of-control hair
complements these masculine pursuits (which also suggest self-exploration),
facilitated by horseback riding. She brags about climbing a mountain and
drinking from its fountain, a dangerous accomplishment that impresses her
father. By refusing to follow her mother’s script, Merida is failing at being
a “can-do” girl, one who, if she follows the approved path of education and
work, would have “the world at her feet” (Harris 14). Brave’s dramatization
of these competing discourses of girlhood may appeal to girls and women
who feel confined by limited visions of empowerment.

                Mother-Daughter Mirroring as Confinement

Adhering to the maternal melodrama, the films portray Mother Gothel and
Queen Elinor trying to mold their daughters into their own visions of successful
womanhood. For these mothers, their daughters’ achievements, in turn, mean
access to power for the adult women; such confining “mirroring” (Williams
300) is visualized by the mother characters’ exertions of control over the
girls’ hair. In Tangled, Gothel sings “Mother Knows Best,” a musical lecture
to Rapunzel, who has asked to leave the tower. Throughout the song, Gothel
uses Rapunzel’s hair as a prop, which parallels her discourse’s contradictory
extremes: she insults Rapunzel while professing to love her. Mother Gothel
caresses Rapunzel’s hair, stroking her own cheek with it: “You know why
we stay up in this tower. . . . That’s right, to keep you safe and sound, dear.”
But Gothel also uses Rapunzel’s hair as a lasso to pull the girl, whose limp
body and wide eyes indicate her intimidation. Emotionally and physically

Maternal Melodrama Meets Postfeminist Girlhood in Tangled and Brave     51

domineering, Gothel’s skill with the hair demonstrates a mastery Rapunzel
lacks, indicating the older woman frequently uses it as a prop.
   Mother Gothel’s ownership over Rapunzel’s hair extends to the girl’s body.
Gothel grabs and pinches Rapunzel while she sings: “Sloppy, underdressed /
Immature, clumsy / Please, they’ll eat you up alive / Gullible, naïve / Posi-
tively grubby / Ditzy and a bit, well, hmm vague / Plus, I believe / Gettin’
kinda chubby / I’m just saying ʼcause I wuv you.” These lines suggest all
of Rapunzel’s self-improvement activities (previously cataloged in “When
Will My Life Begin”) are ineffective, evoking sympathy for a girl whose
mother is attacking her body image. Indeed, Gothel’s diatribe about Rapun-
zel’s flaws is poignant because the song uses familiar clichés about mother
love. Rapunzel, resigned and defeated, suffers in the suffocating grip of her
mother—as well the impossible demands for never-ending self-improvement
expressed in postfeminist media culture.
   As a signifier of youthful beauty, hair traps Rapunzel and empowers Mother
Gothel, whose quest for everlasting youth binds the sorceress to Rapunzel.
The dilemma reflects postfeminist themes, especially those available in
Disney media. Diane Negra observes: “the princesshood phenomenon is be-
ing extended to adult women with the marketing of a line of bridal gowns
linked to female Disney characters and the notable success of films such as
Enchanted,” which “reinforc[e] the centrality and value of youth to femi-
ninity” (49). Negra considers the consequences for adult women, but such a
narrow definition of empowerment is also frustrating for female youth: girls
are young, obviously, but they are also constantly reminded that they will
mourn their temporary youth when they become adult women, who covet what
girls naturally have.11 Tangled, however, confronts this paradox by showing
its deleterious effects on the mother-daughter relationship.
   Brave also invokes the maternal melodrama’s mother-daughter mirroring
trope12 to critique postfeminist media culture. While Gothel touches Rapunzel’s
hair to resemble the girl’s youth, Elinor attempts to make Merida into the
queen’s own image, which Merida resists. For Elinor, Merida’s success as a
future monarch depends on a wise political marriage, a choice Elinor herself
made as a young woman. She confesses: “I understand this must all seem
unfair. Even I had reservations when I faced betrothal.” Merida, however,
rejects this mother doubling: “I don’t want my life to be over. I want my
freedom!” Analogous to Mother Gothel, Elinor justifies her rules as maternal
concern: “If you could just try to see what I do, I do out of love.” Elinor and
Merida, however, do not hear each other during this exchange: Elinor talks
to Fergus, who pretends to be Merida, and Merida rants to her horse as a
stand-in for her mother. At the end of the exchange, Elinor and Merida both
plead for the other to “Listen!” Consistent with Williams’ theory of specta-

52    Katie Kapurch

tors’ identification with multiple subject positions when it comes to maternal
melodrama, the audience of Brave appreciates the characters’ similar need to
be heard, even if they are yet unable to understand each other.
   As she tries to convince Merida of the political stakes of her potential
marriage’s import to a peaceful kingdom, Elinor works to restrain Merida’s
hair, a symbol of the princess’s independent and wayward spirit.13 Fergus
even knows this when he impersonates Merida: “I don’t want to get married,
I want to stay single and let my hair flow in the wind as I ride through the
glen firing arrows into the sunset.” To prepare her daughter for festivities that
will determine a husband, Elinor has tucked Merida’s hair into the constric-
tive white headpiece, a gesture that encapsulates all of the queen’s previous
efforts to mold her daughter. In spite of Merida’s protests, Elinor has also
forced Merida into a tight, corseted dress that resembles the pastel gowns
worn by previous animated Disney princesses. The dress causes Merida physi-
cal discomfort, advancing the film’s critique of the studio’s limited vision of
femininity, which Elinor is upholding. Elinor has even stitched this “good”
version of Merida—without the wild hair and with the restrictive clothing—
into existence in a tapestry featuring their family. But Merida refuses to be
coaxed into her mother’s royal braid.
   Through its mother-daughter hair conflicts, Brave critiques limiting dis-
courses of girlhood by showing how they oppress daughters and mothers;
ostensibly, Elinor had to restrain her own appetites and passions to follow the
“can-do girl’s” path to success. As an adult, however, Elinor is subjected to
the buffoonery of good-natured, but irresponsible male patriarchs, who waste
time and resources by quarrelling and hunting. Even though Fergus is the
king, is uncomfortable with Merida marrying, and shares Merida’s ridicule
of the suitors, he does nothing to stop the competition between clan leaders’
sons for her hand in marriage. Elinor’s pressure on Merida, then, becomes
more understandable, stemming from fear of warfare and its consequences,
which she tries to explain to Merida with the legend of the four kingdoms,
a cautionary tale about a broken family; the legend’s significance only be-
comes apparent to Merida when she is at risk of losing her own mother. This
sympathetic portrayal shows how the maternal melodrama exposes multiple
points of view, allowing for the recognition of paradoxical positions assigned
to women and girls in patriarchy. Brave, then, is a critique of the pressures of
postfeminist media culture, which has not completely eradicated the oppres-
sive demands of patriarchy. By validating Merida’s frustration with such an
unfair system, Brave ultimately proves that she is right to defy (often with
her hair) her mother’s limiting vision of empowerment, which constrains the
adult woman at the same time.

Maternal Melodrama Meets Postfeminist Girlhood in Tangled and Brave      53

                  Daughter Rebellion and Mother Censure

Following the conventions of the maternal melodrama, Tangled’s and Brave’s
daughters reject the dreams their mothers have dreamed for them; hair is the
site of this daughter rebellion, which is, in turn, punished by the mother. In
Tangled, Rapunzel uses her hair as a tool and as a weapon throughout her
journey to see the lights. She even shares her hair’s restorative magic with
Flynn, realizing a power she did not know she had. Once she arrives in what
is actually her home kingdom, Rapunzel’s hair is, for the first time, not such a
cumbersome burden: Flynn finds some children to braid and decorate it with
flowers. Rapunzel’s blooming braid marks her independence and emerging
sexuality—and a new dependence on Flynn. On their romantic boat ride,
she finally sees the lanterns that have always filled the sky on her birthday.
Her braid allows for “normal” movement and physical availability, which
threatens the mother-daughter codependence, a consequence immediately
discerned by Gothel, who punishes the girl for her resistance.
   Because the maternal melodrama allows the spectator to see multiple points
of view, Mother Gothel’s reaction has multiple meanings that also reveal
hair’s polysemous potential. On the one hand, the sorceress has no reason to
trust Flynn, a wanted thief; the audience even knows he initially began the
journey with Rapunzel for the tiara’s reward money, not because he cares
for her (as he comes to do). Gothel’s earlier loss of the flower has made her
understandably suspicious of people with selfish intentions. The sorceress
is not necessarily wrong when she warns Rapunzel to beware of “men with
pointy teeth” in the song-lecture “Mother Knows Best”; Mother Gothel has
experienced more of the unjust world than Rapunzel has.
   On the other hand, Mother Gothel treats the braid as if it is a stain on
Rapunzel’s dignity, refusing to trust Rapunzel’s ability to make her own
decisions. Mother Gothel convinces Rapunzel that Flynn is interested in her
only for the prize money associated with her crown, another clichéd rhetorical
maneuver that sounds a lot like “a boy will love you and leave you once he’s
gotten what he wants.” Flaunting the tiara in a reprise of “Mother Knows
Best,” Mother Gothel sings: “Fine, if you’re so sure now / Go ahead, then
give him this / This is why he’s here! / Don’t let him deceive you! / Give it
to him, watch, you’ll see! / Trust me, my dear / That’s how fast he’ll leave
you / I won’t say I told you so.” These lines resemble the kind of “terror
tactics” and “emphasis on individual responsibility” girls frequently encoun-
ter in abstinence-only education programs: “young women are told . . . that
they alone are accountable for their choices—even in the absence of any
real alternative or viable options” (Burns and Torre 132–33). Gothel scares
Rapunzel about the consequences of giving Flynn her tiara, or her virginity,

54    Katie Kapurch

meaning that is more than subtext since the Flynn-Rapunzel relationship has
taken a romantic turn. Believing that Flynn has abandoned her, a dejected
Rapunzel returns to the tower to unravel the braid. The viewer, however, is
aware Gothel arranged Flynn’s kidnapping and understands her behavior as
unjust. Gothel’s bad mothering evokes sympathy for Rapunzel, so the film’s
adherence to the maternal melodrama helps critique attitudes that restrict
girls’ choices for their own bodies.
   In Brave, hair is a prominent site of conflict between mother and daughter
during the suitor-selection events. At the ceremony introducing the boys, all
young and awkward themselves, Merida pulls a ringleted tuft of hair out of
the headpiece into which her mother has stuffed the hair. Elinor tucks the tuft
in, but Merida takes it out again, sulking but defiant. During the ceremony,
Brave eliminates the possibility of boy-girl romance that viewers expect in
Disney-princess animation since Merida refuses to consider a suitor, devising
a clever way to win the competition herself. All three male heirs are made
unattractive through physical and intellectual clumsiness (unlike Tangled’s
dashing Flynn), and their distastefulness positions the viewer alongside Me-
rida’s perspective. In this way, Brave challenges viewers familiar with the
Disney princess canon by refusing to allow these audience members to hope
for a heterosexual romance.
   Merida defies her mother and their political system by first using her
hair to shock those gathered for the archery competition and, in doing so,
publicly breaks with her mother. Uncloaking herself, Merida lets loose all of
her wild hair as she proudly reveals: “I am Merida, firstborn descendent of
Clan DunBroch! And I’ll be shooting for my own hand!” Ripping the back
of her dress to achieve better tension on the bow, Merida hits the center of
each target, even splitting the arrow with which one boy had managed to hit
the bull’s eye. In fact, this scene’s dress splitting and arrow shooting visually
recalls the scene in Disney’s Robin Hood (1973), in which Robin dons the
costume of a stork, continuing his habit of using disguises, which include drag
performances. The Brave-Robin Hood connection supports an interpretation
of Brave’s progressive suggestions about gender reversals. The parallel also
reinforces the connection between Merida’s bow and her hair, objects that
facilitate her resistance to the feminine career path that her mother and their
patriarchal culture have established for her.
   Resembling Mother Gothel, Elinor reacts to her daughter’s rebellious dis-
play of hair and archery skill in outrage, furious that the girl has defied the
queen’s investment in Merida’s future as a married monarch. With crying and
overstatements, Merida’s and Elinor’s passionate exchange resembles mother-
daughter disagreements in Douglas Sirk’s maternal melodrama, Imitation of
Life, whose daughters threaten to leave their mothers. Merida explicitly resists

Maternal Melodrama Meets Postfeminist Girlhood in Tangled and Brave     55

the mother doubling: “You were never there for me! This whole marriage
is what YOU want! Do you ever bother to ask what I want? No! You walk
around telling me what to do, what not to do! Trying to make me be like
you! Well, I’m not going to be like you!” Elinor dismisses Merida by call-
ing her a “child,” an insult that prompts more rebellion: Merida slashes the
tapestry into which her mother has rendered her docile with the restrictive
headpiece. In retribution, Elinor throws Merida’s bow into the fire. Although
Elinor has good mother/bad mother tendencies, casting Merida’s bow into the
fire positions her as the maternal melodrama’s bad mother—from Merida’s
perspective. In tears, Merida leaves the room before she can hear or see her
mother’s regret. Elinor realizes her mistake (“Oh, no! What have I done?”),
and she tries unsuccessfully to salvage the burning bow, falling to her knees
in defeat. This scene encourages sympathy for Merida and Elinor at once,
so the viewer roots for a mother-daughter reconciliation even though that is
complicated by subsequent events.

                Tearful Transformations and Reconciliations

In the maternal melodrama, bad mothering is punished by suffering—often
experienced by mother and daughter alike—but the bad mother’s literal or
symbolic death makes way for reconciliation (Kaplan; Williams). Tangled’s
and Brave’s resolutions are also facilitated by tears, recalling memorable
fairy tale imagery, as well as melodramatic tropes. In Tangled, Mother Gothel
mortally stabs Flynn, who, in order to save Rapunzel, cuts her hair in his
last moments of life, giving her a spiky brunette bob. The sorceress begins
to decompose, trips over Rapunzel’s dead hair, and falls from the tower. Is
Flynn’s cutting of Rapunzel’s hair a perpetuation of old Disney sexism—or
a critique of it? On the one hand, Flynn steals Rapunzel’s choice by decid-
ing to cut her hair, deactivating its powers and turning it brown, a symbolic
violence against Rapunzel’s (sexual) subjectivity. The loss of Rapunzel’s
blonde hair, her defining characteristic, may resemble her virginity, whereby
sexual initiation is a loss, rather than gain. On the other hand, Flynn is dy-
ing and clipping Rapunzel’s hair is a last-minute effort to “save” her from
Mother Gothel’s clutches. Flynn does not know Rapunzel’s tears are also
restorative. In this way, Tangled suggests Rapunzel’s worth is not bound up
in the long, blonde hair, a progressive message that challenges social efforts
to guard girls’ so-called purity in way that the sorceress does in the many
folkloric accounts and literary versions of “Rapunzel.”
   The death of the bad mother allows Rapunzel to assume her true identity as a
princess, coinciding with her shift from desired object to desiring subject—and
more perfectly postfeminist. For most of the film, Tangled has downplayed

56    Katie Kapurch

the emphasis on empowerment through consumption of goods (although
Rapunzel is fixated on accessing the lights that appear on her birthday). And
while Rapunzel’s heterosexual naiveté delays her romantic feelings for Flynn,
their eventual romance positions her squarely in line with definitions of Girl
Power and postfeminist subjectivity: she’s got the guy—and the economic
spending power to keep a man whose thieving past (and obsession with a
certain tiara) means he will probably enjoy their wealth.
   In Tangled, the death of the bad Mother Gothel allows Rapunzel to shed
the baggage of her hair and makes way for Rapunzel’s reconciliation with
her good mother, the queen. Hair affirms the “true” mother-daughter connec-
tion: Rapunzel’s brown hair is now identical to the queen’s brunette coloring,
a visual likeness made obvious when they tearfully embrace. Rapunzel’s
hair transformation permanently destroys the bad mother, and it facilitates
the emergence of the “real” good mother, one who is still, after all of these
years away from her daughter, mute, passive, and gentle—the complete op-
posite of Mother Gothel, who actively fights for what she wants. The film,
like so many maternal melodramas before it, seems to suggest an ideal of
motherhood that involves docile femininity, a conventional message that
Brave does not uphold.
   Unlike Rapunzel, Merida’s hair is not transformed by the film’s end;
instead, it is Elinor’s hair (and entire body for that matter) that is altered.
After Merida’s defiant archery and argument with Elinor, Merida gallops
away, encountering will o’ the wisps, which lead her to a witch’s shop.
She buys a spell to “change” her mother, not realizing the “change” will
be a physical transformation into a bear. In doing so, Brave critiques the
postfeminist construction of a girl’s empowerment through consumption:
Merida’s transaction suggests that consumerism is associated with negative
and unnatural outcomes. Elinor’s bad mothering, however, is vindicated by
this bear transformation, which allows mother and daughter to see the other’s
perspective. Elinor risks losing her humanity altogether if Merida is unable
to discern the witch’s advice: “Fate be changed, look inside. Mend the bond
torn by pride.” As a furry bear covered in hair, Elinor is forced to recognize
Merida’s unique physical skills and cleverness, which help them through their
predicament and change the queen’s mind about Merida needing to marry.
Merida comes to appreciate what Elinor had been trying to teach her about
the dangers of a warring kingdom. Fergus’s temperamental rush to judgment
is especially dangerous when he and the other clansmen whip themselves
into a bear-hunting frenzy; in this irrational state, Fergus refuses to listen
to Merida and nearly kills his wife-turned-bear. Merida, in turn, remembers
how her mother’s comfort and care protected her when she was a little girl,
a scenario replayed when Elinor (still a bear) sacrificially places herself in
front of her daughter to guard her from Mor’du.

Maternal Melodrama Meets Postfeminist Girlhood in Tangled and Brave      57

   Indeed, it takes Elinor becoming a bear covered in hair (technically fur)
to end the conflict over Merida’s wild hair. As in Tangled, Merida’s reunion
with her “real” good mother, now in human form, occurs through a tearful
embrace. When Merida mends the tapestry she had slashed and cries over
her mother’s bear body, Elinor becomes human again; her now-unclothed
body and loose hair are a carefree contrast to the queen’s former grooming.
Instead of resuming the decorated braid, subsequent scenes depict Elinor’s
straight hair down with only front pieces gathered. With unbound hair flying
behind them, mother and daughter ride horseback together, pursuing the kind
of outdoor adventures they shared at the beginning of the film. Merida has
not lost any of her wild features, but she does appear to be listening to her
mother, something she was unable to do before.
   Brave’s conclusion is certainly more progressive than Tangled’s; compro-
mise and the sharing of perspectives are feminist strategies, hopeful solu-
tions for intergenerational conflicts between mothers and daughters. The film
reinforces this conclusion in one of the final images: Elinor’s new tapestry
features a wild-haired Merida and the bear version of her mother looking
into each other’s eyes. Brave is especially noteworthy for the absence of a
heterosexual romance in this positive mother-daughter resolution; the film’s
box-office success proves that not all Disney princesses need a happily ever
after that involves a prince.

                                  Conclusion

Although Rapunzel and Merida struggle to assert an identity as “something
else besides” a daughter, generally their subject positions as daughters remain
unchanged by their films’ ends. They are, however, daughters on their own
terms, accepted by their mothers, who are freed from their obsession with the
girls’ hair (and bodies more generally) through a transformation involving hair.
   Through maternal melodrama, a genre premised on the representation of
mother-daughter intimacy, Tangled and Brave appeal to contemporary girls
and women by representing and confronting social pressures associated with
postfeminist media culture. Just as redeeming and complex mother-daughter
relationships have been absent from “classic” Disney animated pictures, so
too were narratives centered on female friendship and sisterhood. What is
function of hair (or the body) as a point of connection between, for example,
Frozen’s sisters? What does the representation of similarly aged girls (op-
posed to mother and daughter), who are struggling to relate to one another,
say about postfeminist girlhood? The findings of this article beg for more
untangling of Disney’s ongoing portrayals of female intimacy.