This week we have an awesome guest post from the lovely Sharon, all her links can be found in the post, so please do pop by and say hi!

When I considered the title, who is my number one female Disney character, it didn’t take me long to choose. Given there are a number of characters to choose from I had to think why this was an easy option. A lot of considerations were attached to this specific Disney character and I hope to explain more as I go on and maybe you can guess?

A description of the character
First and blindingly obvious is that the character is female and is part of a Disney film. The film itself was a huge box office success of 2013. The soundtrack featured 10 original songs and one song in particular won an Academy Award, Grammy Award and Golden Globe Award. Are you close? This female in my opinion, leads the film and is both strong and powerful, in addition she is quite different to other princesses that you may have seen in other films. For me, she steps all over the stereotype of what a princess should and shouldn’t do.

Have you guessed yet?
If not, here’s some other clues, she has a sister and lives in Arendelle.
Yes, that’s right it’s Elsa; Princess Elsa.

Ok so now we know which female we are talking about, why do I, a 44 year old mum believes that Elsa is the number one female Disney character? As stated earlier, I found Elsa’s character in the film Frozen very strong and opinionated. At the beginning of the film Elsa has powers that she cannot control, she freezes things and given that she doesn’t want to hurt her sister, she stays strong by avoiding her, even if this means isolation for herself. Then when she was crowned Queen due to unforeseen family circumstances she has no choice but to rule the country. Elsa attempts to do this by controlling her freezing powers with gloves as she doesn’t want anyone to know about them.

However when her powers are made public, and her friends feel she is a witch Elsa chooses as a strong independent woman to live alone for fear of hurting others. During the beginning of life alone she has internal struggles believing she cannot be her true self. The change in character throughout the film is inspiring to watch; from a frightened child, to a runaway teenager into a fierce woman as she takes on many men in the bid to not be imprisoned. Therefore the film shows an evolving character who has many emotions, all real for a woman; self belief, loneliness, being afraid.

Whilst adoring the power of Elsa’s character through her transformation, her powers cannot go unnoticed either and you may have heard of another Disney Queen that could also freeze people; The Snow Queen and that is largely who the Frozen film was built upon. However whilst Elsa’s freezing powers could and do hurt people they can also do good and gave Arandelle, Elsa’s homeland a magical Christmas once she understood how to control her powers.

No Princess stereotype here
Many princesses in Disney fall in love and live happily ever after and whilst Frozen did have a happy ending it was a delight to see that throughout the film, Elsa had no love interest. She didn’t need one. She literally carried the film with another strong female, her sister Anna. Therefore both Elsa and Anna have become amazing role models for girls globally; you can be free, you can be yourself and you don’t need a love interest to be considered successful and strong.

Since Elsa’s character was that of a strong woman and with the unforgettable soundtrack of the film, Frozen has become a firm favourite in our house; even more so that for my daughter Ellie, it was the first full film that has kept her attention and enjoyment. Ellie has Down Syndrome so usually 20 minutes is enough for her and that memory of her watching the film is one I’ll never forget.

Conclusion
In addition to the film and Elsa’s character being a firm favourite I personally loved seeing Elsa’s authority in the film which was like no other Disney Princess and because of that she will always be my number one female Disney character.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read and if you don’t agree with me, please comment who your number one female Disney Character is. If you would like to follow my own journey of educating people about Down Syndrome, feel free
http://bit.ly/shazandellie
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