Two princesses in one

by Gimalsky Marilú & Moni Noelia

“By night one way, by day another. This shall be the norm until you find true love’s first kiss and then take true love’s form.” This is Fiona’s curse in Shrek. Is it the norm that women should change to be loved? Someone who supports the idea that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men can be considered a feminist. There are not  written laws about how men should live their lives. If Fiona were a feminist, she would not even consider her curse to be valid, because she wouldn’t even think in changing because of love. She would feel complete without the company of a man and, in any case, she would be next to a man that loves her as she is.

As we know to meet true love does not mean to change. Feminists  are not ready to leave everything because of love, we are not ready to change our lifestyles or what we like doing because of love. Therefore, we can say that Princess Fiona does not fit the stereotype of women from a feminist view.

From a feminist perspective women consider  themselves complete without needing a couple. This is not what Fiona believes in . Since we were children we listened to the story of the blue prince that would come to complete our lives and because of that we have internalized this conception of love. As John Lennon said, “they made us believe that each one of us is the half of an orange, and that life only makes sense when you find that another half.” But we know that this is a misconception. Lennon continued  his idea telling us that we are born as a whole and that we do not need another person to fulfill our lives expectations. As regards Fiona, she is an incomplete princess who only expects to find her other half through a kiss. She cannot think of her life without a man, she has no other expectation more than staying next to a man to be like him.

Nowadays women have a lot of interests. They are more interested in their personal realization. They work, study, and even have children without the company of a couple. This does not mean that they do not want to fall in love, but it means that they  do not want to change as Princess Fiona does. Women no longer believe in the story of “The half orange”.

Fiona needs to kiss her true love, not any man. So she depends on a man´s love and  his kiss. She has to wait for them to break up her curse. Clearly, this is portraying how dependent Fiona is. She is not free to change her life as she wants. In a way, love is part of being a man´s prisoner. Nowadays, women know that freedom is a right we are born with. We can choose to change to be whatever we want without the approval of our couple. It is not that we have to change because of him or to fit with his own nature. Thus, there is no point in waiting for the love of our lives or even a kiss as Fiona does, because nothing should be transformed except our feeling of happiness.

Above all, what we can see in the story of Princess Fiona is that she depends on someone else to change and in this way, fulfill her life’s ambitions and dreams. She needs “his other half” as women have listened since we are born and through our childhood and adolescence as well. She doesn’t dare to be herself without a man beside her, so she is not in tune with the feminist view of women.