Cinderella

Well now, this post was started by the movie...which I am also watching as I make this post. 

It is actually my favorite film out of the entire Cinderella fandom.  This is because of a number of reasons (not including the fact that Richard Madden, who also played Robb Stark from Game of Thrones, is paying the prince. Definitely not. Not at all. Nope.).

(That smile...)

ANYWAY!!!! Moving on...

This film hit a number of high points.  The prince character was fleshed out.  There is depth to the Prince beyond  the "Charming" bit.  Which I think means a great deal for men and women, all around.  Men are not competing with an imagined idea of the perfect "prince", and women are not fantasizing about a person that cannot realistically exist.  Two dimensionally characters do not transfer well to reality.  I'm sure they'd melt or something.

By most favorite part of the film is that both female and male leads have obstacles that they have to overcome before they can get their happily ever after.  This, I find, is consistent with what we face now.  We all have problems and obstacles that block our way to the happiness we strive for.  Sometimes those obstacles may even be our family and their expectations for us.  Other times, it is the expectations we think is expected of us. 

Did the prince not think he had to marry for advantage? Did Ella not think she could never find love, much less with a prince?

The most powerful of the film, I like to think, is that almost missed message: you can't do it alone.  When the "prince" meet his "honest, country girl", she imparted onto him a lesson of power and strength.  Just as the Fairy Godmother helped Ella make it to the ball. 

We are all people with strength we don't think we have.  Only we as individuals can take the journey before us.  But that does not mean we have to take it alone or that we won't need help along the way. 

In the end of the film, the newly crowned king rescues his intended bride from her tower prison.  But it was Cinderella who saved herself, her dignity and it was she who walked away with her head held high. 

We may not be born princes and princesses but that does not mean we cannot be just as noble or as graceful or as kind or as dignified. 

All of us have the capacity for greatness, so long as we are willing to reach for it.