What does love have to do with it?

Real beauty does come from within but it takes true love for beauty to unfold. Very much like a flower. Budding from closed, tight petals then slowly unfurling and opening into a flower into its fullest bloom, delighting the one who beholds it. 

True love is where a person loves another regardless of appearance, pleasing or not. It is where superficial misconceptions are revealed and resolved. In the case of the unforgettable Disney characters, Belle and Beast, both had to move beyond their immediate circumstances as well as their own preconceived notions to come to understand each other’s hearts to find beauty within.

Such a story can melt any man or woman’s waxy facade into something gentler. It can open up their humanity to their own selves. True love reciprocated has a healing effect where the beloved finally feels seen, valued and understood. That is the real cure. The only way to break the curse. 

The summer I turned ten.

As a ten year old, it only made sense to me that the gentlest and the sweetest person in the village could have changed the Beast for the better. 

Sure there was a great song by the villagers about Belle being beautiful but odd in every other way. But to me, that just meant she was not one of the popular (mean) girls every other kid wanted to form some sort of clique with.

And I saw a monster of a bully in the Beast. This creature had no semblance of humanity. He was a hulking and horrifying animal that was going to lock away an innocent man. He was as cruel as he looked.

For Beast, he was fortunate to have Belle to be brave enough to complete his heartless sentence he put upon her father.  Does it seem a bit too “deus ex machina?” Sure. Especially as we get older and hear this story again and again.

But as a ten year old girl, however, who had not seen this movie before and had no notion of plot structure, I saw Belle as the most likely person to be your playmate and have the best time taking our dolls out on adventures. And I was an avid doll playing girl. So of course Belle would be the bravest and the smartest and the prettiest girl to save her father and her village from being eaten up by a monster.

And when the story came to an end and we watch Beast reveal his original form, I was not impressed to find a grown man with long hair come out from under the spell. Who’s version of handsome was that to anyone? Did this mean that Belle would have to grow up too? I still wanted to play with my dolls with her.

Did Belle really want to leave her doting father? As a child, that was all I could imagine. And yet, our Belle, our hero, was overjoyed to get married to this real human guy, who had not gotten a haircut for ages. 

“Well, if it really does make you happy,” thought I, while making sure that I, too, would always truly love her even if she did get married. I would have hated to undo the effect of true love and have the dark curse return. 

Getting married meant that he would be her special friend forever. As I grew older, I learned that as friendships have shared histories that create deep bonds, so do couples have their histories. For Belle and Beast/Prince, this would forever be their story, the well from which they would always draw from so they can continue to live happily ever after.