Happily Ever After. The phrase itself sounds and feels outdated in today's culture. For the majority of today's society, happily ever after is an antiquated notion that at the end of the day everything is going to be coming up roses and the world will be a happy, peaceful place. If you look for a second at the society we live in, it's not hard to realize that everything is indeed not coming up roses and that a peaceful society feels like a far off fantasy. When most people think of a happily ever after, they picture fairy tales, Snow White riding off into the sunset with her prince, Sleeping Beauty being awoken by true love's kiss and similar images - many of them conjured by Disney.
There seems to be two distinct view point on happily ever after. Either you think it exists or you think its absolute nonsense and Disney got it way wrong. Well, I'm going to throw a monkey wrench in there and say both view points are correct. Happily ever after does exist; it just looks different for everyone.
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Now before you go writing this off completely, just hear me out. When fairy tales were written (or transcribed), they were intended to teach morals and life lessons. Some of the most popular fairy tales just so happen to be about princesses and the originals are often more gruesome than the Disney retellings. There is no way Disney's Cinderella would have done as well as it did if the movie followed the original Grimm Brothers' tale, Aschenputtel. Trust me when I say that very few parents would want their children watching a movie where stepsisters cut off their heels and big toes in order to fit into a shoe and then have their eyes plucked out by birds, or where the evil queen is forced to dance in red hot (actually blazing red with heat) shoes for the rest of eternity/until she dies. Those scenarios don't necessarily make for family friendly movies and that is how the Grimm Brothers ended their tales.
So Disney retellings clean the originals up a bit and make them more appealing, of course. But they also stick true to the originals as far as what happily ever after would be for the princesses. For Cinderella, happily ever after is being free from her stepmother and stepsisters, something she finds in her new life with Price Charming. Belle's happily ever after include adventure and no longer feeling like an outcast - both things she finds in life with the Beast/Prince Adam. The happily ever afters displayed in Disney movies are indicative of what the princesses desire and just so happen to include princes and castles and other romantic notions.
Happily Ever After shows up in today's contemporary and young adult literature as well. Take for instance Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games trilogy or J. K. Rowling's Harry Potterseries. (Fair warning: spoilers ahead! If you haven't finished either of these series and still intend to, either via book or movie, you might want to skip this paragraph.) Believe it or not, there are happily ever afters for the characters in both series. For Katniss, her happily ever after is a life without the Games. A life where her children are safe from the terrors the Games incited and the constant fear she experienced as a child and teenager in Panem. Harry's happily ever after was a world without Voldemort, a world where he was not fighting to survive at every turn. Harry's happily ever after was a life where his scar no longer hurt. Katniss and Harry both got their happily ever afters, but since these endings do not directly involve princes, weddings, romance, and the like, their happy endings are not always seen as such.
Long story short, there is absolutely such a thing as happily ever after. Heck, if I had a dollar for every time I heard some variation of "Happily ever after doesn't exist," or "Happily ever after sets unrealistic expectations for young girls," I could pay for a trip to the happiest place on earth and actually get to meet all of the princesses. (No, I have never been to Disney, but that's another story for another day). In my mind, saying that happily ever after doesn't exist is a lot like telling Harry Potter there's no such thing as magic - its a load of bologna and a complete waste of time. If we only subscribe to one image of happily ever after then no it does not exist, at least not for everyone. If we take off the old-fashioned glasses and remember that not everyone wants a fairy tale-esque happily ever after, that not everyone is looking for the dashing princes and daring sword fights, we could actually start to see happily ever afters occurring all around us. And that, my friends, is truly magical.
