Around the same time Disney figured out that little girls would be stoked to see all their favorite princesses on backpacks and lunch boxes and underwear and cigarette lighters, they also realized little girls would be mega-stoked to see more stories from those same characters. Here's my one-question quiz to find out if you're old:
Does the idea of a Cinderella sequel make you feel:
A. Sick. It's like painting a mustache on the "Mona Lisa" or making Bill Murray participate in a new Ghostbusters. You don't mess with masterpieces.
B. Awesome! I love Cinderella! (Winky emoji, followed by thumbs-up emoji, followed by five OMG emojis, and the last one is wearing sunglasses because he's a rebel!)
C. Don't care.
Here's my prediction: If you answered "A," you're a grown-up woman. If you answered "B," you're a little girl. If you answered "C," you're a teenage girl who already lived through the sequel era and has moved on to listing your interests as Lorde and boredom.
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GOD, MOM.
My point is that millennial girls grew up on Disney sequels, so they internalized the fact that the fairy tale wedding is not the end of the story. In their world, Cinderella went on to have problems managing the palace, Ariel struggled with raising her daughter Tween Ariel, Mulan spends a whole sequel tackling her emotions about arranged marriages, Jasmine sides with her father after a fight with Aladdin, and Belle gets two whole prequels that explore how much she argued with the Beast before he transformed to a human. In other words, Disney quietly mooted all our concerns about the perfect fairy tale ending with their crappy direct-to-DVD sequels. It's almost like Disney knew little girls were watching or something.
Kristi is a senior editor and columnist for Cracked. For more from her, check out past articles here, and follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
For more from Kristi, check out The 4 Reasons Renee Zellweger's Face Actually Scares Us and 4 Terrible Messages That Girl-Centered Ads Are Sending.
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