Rejected Princesses is My New Favorite Tumblr

Sorry, Kittenstache.

Former DreamWorks animator Jason Porath has a new Tumblr dedicated to some of the baddest bitches of all time. He presents the weird, wild, and often horrifying facts (taken directly from history and myth) about these women’s lives, alongside cartoon renderings of them in the familiar Disney style.

I love this idea because it draws attention to two important facts: 1) The stories that Disney tells about women are consistently disappointing, and 2) history is full of amazing stories about women that barely get told at all.

Consider the classic trifecta of Disney princesses: Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White. All three are borrowed from traditional fairy tales, and afforded basically zero personality or autonomy. They’re just pretty, and in a terrible situation because some older woman is jealous of how pretty they are. They yearn to be rescued (see: Snow White’s signature ballad “Some Day My Prince Will Come”) and after some series of events totally outside of their control, their handsome saviors show up and rescue them by turning them into wives. Cringe. Yawn.

Then Disney evolved a little bit, and started giving us heroines with a little moxy: Belle was a bookworm, Ariel was adventurous, Pocahontas was strong-willed, Jasmine was disobedient. All of these women started out feeling restless, eager to discover the world outside of the confines of their sheltered lives. But every damn one of them finds her destiny in some man. Every one of them ventures just far enough to discover her soulmate and then settles back in, satisfied that her love story (and therefore her entire story) has reached its happy ending.

Which is the first reason why Porath’s Tumblr is so awesome. I can’t think of a pop culture trope I am more eager to see turned on its ear.

The second reason is that it reminds readers of some amazing people who should never have been forgotten in the first place. Some of them are admirable, some controversial, some downright sinister. But all of them are complex and powerful, and all of them serve as a reminder that the so-called “fairer sex” is a whole lot more interesting than history has given it credit for.

Reading this Tumblr, I was happy to learn a lot of new names, and to see some familiar ones that I do not see very often. Here are a few personal favorites:

Ida B. Wells: Journalist, activist, and early hero of the civil rights movement, Ida B. Wells is an all-around inspiration. She dedicated (and often risked) her life for the cause of spreading truth as an instrument of social justice. At a time when the horrific practice of lynching was common and widely misunderstood, she wrote about its brutal reality in works like her book Southern Horrors.

Pasiphae: Although she is totally fictional, I loved seeing Pasiphae on there because the story of the Minotaur is my number one favorite story of all time. I just love the characters, including the Minotaur’s mother Pasiphae, who is often omitted when people tell the tale of this famous hybrid monster.

Wu Zeitan: While studying Chinese history in college, I remember reading Wu Zeitan’s story and wondering if she was a full blown psychopath or just a product of her times. She was the only female emperor ever to rule in China. Remember that speech in Macbeth where Lady Macbeth vows that she would kill her own baby if it secured her in a position of power? Yeah, Wu Zeitan actually did that. But it begs the question of whether a woman who was anything short of a cold blooded child killer could have done what she did, given the attitude of the time.

Elisabeth Bathory: History’s most prolific serial killer. With a title as incendiary as that, you’d think she’d be more widely known. Twilight brought pop culture’s love affair with vampires to new extremes. But even that couldn’t raise this “Blood Countess” (whose story served as inspiration for the original Dracula myth) from the coffin of history.

Even though these are some of the most impactful women (and/or intriguing stories) of all time, none of them are household names. Sure, they’re documented, and some people know about them. But if you mentioned any of them at a party it would never get the same reaction as mentioning, say….Benjamin Franklin. Or Napoleon. Or Alexander the Great.

Why is that? Maybe it’s because they’re hard to like. The three dudes mentioned above were all profoundly flawed, but we would never let those flaws overshadow their historical significance. With women, if we can’t root for them every step of the way, we can’t handle them. 

A Disney princess may be sulky or stubborn or mischievous, but beyond that she’s utterly unobjectionable. Just like she always has Barbie-esque proportions to match her perfectly symmetrical face. Mulan is something of an exception to the mold outlined above. But for all her genderbending badassery, her character presents no challenge to the viewer. She is consummately virtuous. She never does anything that might complicate how we feel about her.

Not so with most of the women on Porath’s list.

We’ve all heard Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s charming adage that “well behaved women seldom make history”. This is true, but even badly behaved women struggle to make the cut. A lot of people, when confronted with a difficult woman, will awkwardly avoid her. Historically, we tend to put them off to the side where we don’t have to deal.

That’s why it’s so important to pay tribute to the outliers, who managed to write their names in ink (or blood) in a world that didn’t expect them to make an impact. And if we can do that while making fun of a cultural powerhouse that promotes antiquated gender stereotypes, so much the better!