In the Disney version, the Beauty is Belle. Belle is a bookworm and she's a brunette. That was probably why I liked Belle so much. There weren't that many brunette (in fact I think Belle is the only brunette princess) princesses so I immediately gave her props just for having the same hair as me. Then of course, she's a bookworm. I was also bookish! So in some ways Belle was the first fictional character that I identified with. She was a bookworm, I was a bookworm. She was a brunette, I was a brunette. She even had brownish eyes (well, really she has hazel eyes).
She was a fictional character, a character that I could relate to even though she didn't really exist. And since the story of Beauty and the Best was my favorite fairy tale I learned a lot from it.
People joke about how it encourages bestiality and abuse, it really doesn't. Of course these are just jokes and we laugh at them. But the story is of how a beautiful, innocent woman like Belle could fall for a horrible thing like the Beast.
Of course everyone knows this, but it is a beautiful story and quite unlike the other princess stories. Beauty did not fall for the handsome prince the Beast became, she saw the goodness in the evil Beast and fell in love. I always felt that what the story of Beauty and the Beast teaches us is that there is goodness in everyone. Even in the most horrid of people, there is beauty and goodness. And of course, using the overly cliche line 'beauty is skin deep', but there is a lot of truth in that phrase. There is more to a person then just their beauty.Some people I know are perplexed when I tell them that a man's personality is the most attractive trait. He could be the shortest man, he could be the ugliest man, but if he has an awesome personality he could be the most attractive man in the world. Belle saw that there was more to the Beast then just his horrid animalistic face and his horrible claws, she saw goodness and kindness within someone who was ugly and horrid. While the Beast would not have won any awards for his great personality, he changed with Belle's help and he changed enough and loved Belle enough to release her and return to her father.
But I have always wondered what would have happened if the Beast would have stayed the way he was. While a relationship between Belle and the Beast would have been extremely disturbing, I always wondered if Belle would have still loved him. And really, we will never know, but I like to think that she would have. She would have loved him even if he stayed the way he was; ugly, but good.
So that's why I like the story of Beauty and the Beast, Belle is an intelligent character who is good and pure; and the Beast is a man who never realized how good he could be. It teaches young girls, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and beauty is only skin deep.
(I am very cliche in this blog post aren't I?)
And of course I can't write a blog post about Beauty and the Beast without putting up this video too!
