SORTING DISNEY LADIES (1999-2004)
Part 1 - Disney Ladies 1937-1985
Part 2 - Disney Ladies 1988-1993
Part 3 - Disney Ladies 1995-1998
I’m going in chronological order, and doing both A Squad and B Squad, because I’m interested in tracking how the ideal “disney girl” has changed in the last (almost) 90 years. Right now I’m only looking at the human-shaped heroines of Disney animated theatrical releases. A more detailed break-down of the system I’m using is right here, but the basics are these:
BADGER ~ Loyal to the group.
SNAKE ~ Loyal to yourself and your Important People.
LION ~ Subconscious Idealist. Ideals are linked to feelings and instincts.
BIRD ~ Conscious Idealist. Ideals are linked to built systems and external facts.
BADGER ~ Connect with the group. Make allies, work steadily and well. Be whatever the situation calls for. If you find a locked door, knock.
SNAKE ~ Connect with the environment. Notice things. Tell people what they want to hear. If you find a locked door, get in through the window.
BIRD ~ Collect skills, tools, knowledge, personas, useful friends. If you find a locked door, track down the key or learn to pick the lock.
LION ~ Be honest, be direct, speak your truth. Either the obstacle is going down or you are. If you find a locked door, kick it in.
Disney’s Tarzan is a ridiculously Snake primary movie. Like, just to make this really, really clear, the first thing we see - the absolute cold open, is -
Burning ship! Storm! Fire! Tarzan’s parents get into a lifeboat!
He looks at her. She looks at him.
Phil Collins --
PUT YOUR FAITH IN WHAT YOU MOST BELEEEIVE IN!!!!!!
We get it. You can lose literally everything, but if you’ve still got your Person, you’re going to be OK.
And this movie’s ethos is definitely Snake, not Loyalist. Badger primaries do not get a flattering edit. The antagonist for the first half is Tarzan’s adoptive father Kerchack, who is deeply protective of his band of gorillas (all girls, by the way. He's the only guy. Which is how gorillas work, and the film doesn’t exactly bring attention to it, but still. Interesting detail.) He’s a loud Badger primary: the only thing that matters is keeping his family out of danger, and from his perspective Tarzan is a problem from day one. He is too obviously an outsider, not a true member of the community, and Kerchack makes it clear that Tarzan is not his son. “You can’t learn to be one of us," he says.
The antagonist for the second half of the film (it’s a weirdly structured film) is the Jaguar/Clayton. They are 100% the same entity. Clayton shows up immediately after the Jaguar dies, and shows up wearing the exact same color palette. There is a recurring misunderstanding where Tarzan refers to the sound of a gunshot as “Clayton.” This is not supposed to be a person, this is violence personified.
Clayton is also our visual representation of The British Empire/Colonialism, with his spats and his khakis and little pencil mustache, and Brian Blessed doing his voice. He is there to grab the resources (gorillas) and take them back to England. So… that means we’ve got some more Toxic Badger going on here too.
In this film, the Badger primary idea of “community” is framed as stifling, artificial, at odds with nature. Clayton, Jane, and Jane’s father show up in the jungle dressed all wrong, and while the sympathetic Porters gradually shed layers, Clayton’s character design never changes. He does not learn to adapt to the jungle, he is only England™
There’s also the recurring joke of Jane’s “Proper Victorian Lady” persona. It’s very useful for getting Clayton specifically to do things for her… but she also brings it out in moments where it seems false and not terribly appropriate. Like when she’s talking to monkeys, or to Tarzan. The second she realizes that Tarzan can speak English she snaps into “Proper Victorian Lady” instead of following up on the attraction that’s clearly there. She’s holding him at arm's length, and why??? The moment where he comes out dressed in European clothing is bittersweet, like Tarzan is hiding or losing part of himself. “Society” is at odds with instinct/freedom/love, and in terms of Primary, that’s the major conflict between Tarzan and Jane.
JANE. Tarzan, you can't imagine what's in store for you. You're going to see the world. Everyone's going to want to meet you. Kings, scientists and famous writers. (...)
TARZAN. And I'll be with Jane.
Jane is talking like a Badger (you’ll be part of the community.) Tarzan is talking like a Snake (I’ll be with you.) And Jane DOES feel like a Badger through most of the movie. She talks a good game. But right at the end - when it really comes down to it - that’s not the call she makes.
JANE. I belong in England, with you and people and —
PROFESSOR PORTER. But you love him. Go on.
At which point Jane joyfully jumps off the boat and swims to shore, implying that her Badger primary was a model, and she was always a Snake primary underneath.
Jane Porter might model Double Badger extremely well, but she’s actually a double Snake like Megara. She’ll go all Proper Victorian Lady to flatter Clayton, but she’ll also manipulate the baby monkey (“Oh I can’t believe you fell for that one”) before commenting on how its performance isn’t quite up to her standards (“Don’t give me those crocodile tears.”) She’s also something of a Single-Player Environment snake. When she gets comfortable, she starts learning how to use the things in her environment. She’s delighted when she learns she can use her parasol as a weapon. Jane also seems to pick up that Tarzan is a Bird secondary, and interacts with him accordingly. She puts together an entire slideshow of buildings and customs and art from the mainland, and he is riveted.
(Tarzan is definitely a Bird secondary: he's an inventor, he makes weapons, he loves teaching himself things. He’s much more tactical than Kerchak, who uses his lion secondary to literally charge into fights. Phil Collins tells us all we need to know about Tarzan with the lyrics: “I want to know / Can you show me?” Perfect Snake Bird anthem.)
When we see Jane at the very end of the film she’s entirely improvisational and fluid, surfing the vines with Tarzan, the two of them so in sync and moving together so beautifully. It’s a gorgeous bit of animation. I definitely get a sense of the joy she feels at being so unconstrained and evenly matched, which is another thing that makes me say Snake secondary.
KIDADIKASH “KIDA” NEDAKAH (2001)
Atlantis is so close to being a good movie. All it needs is a slightly longer runtime, and like… two less characters. (Mole and Cookie. Don’t need them.) Kida gets less screen time compared than some of the the other ladies on this list, but she has enough presence and a cool enough design that she easily earns heroine status. It also helps that she’s basically the plot.
Kida wants to restore the traditions and knowledge her people have lost, and that motivates pretty much everything she does. She finds the history and culture of her ancestors deeply important, comforting and grounding in a very Badger primary sort of way, and laments that “We were once a great people. Now we live in ruins. The kings of our past would weep if they could see how far we have fallen.” She is very much not Jane, who needs to shake off “civilization” in order to live her best life.
The problem though, is that Kida falls into a very Badger primary trap. When she’s asked to give up everything to protect the group - including her well-being and identity - she does it without a second thought. She gets turned/turns herself into a magic crystal in order to power her civilization while it’s under threat, and I cannot think of a better metaphor of what it means to be an Invisible Badger, who is only the group with no identity outside it.
The ‘Heart of Atlantis’ crystal that “thrives on the collective emotions of all who came before us [and] in return, provides power, longevity, protection” is just a good metaphor for a ‘Badger Primary’ in general. Also, the way that the Atlantean King tries to weaponize it, ultimately destroying his civilization, is a good metaphor for the way a Badger primary can Explode, becoming authoritarian and harmful to the same people it is trying to protect.
Clearly the film itself is not a fan of this decision, as our protagonist Milo loves Kida and does everything he can to un-crystal her. I think it’s implied that his love is one of the main things tethering her to humanity? Still, I would say that this film, unlike Tarzan, has a pretty Badger ethos. King Kashekim is our tragic misguided Snake primary, willing to let his whole civilization crumble so long as he gets to keep his daughter, and our villains seem to be mostly Hedonist Snake treasure hunters, willing to destroy a culture so long as they get paid. The film is definitely critical of certain types of Badger primaries, but ends on a note of collectivism. Milo has finally found a community that values him, and he stays behind to help Kida, now the Atlantean Queen, rebuild her civilization. She’s still a Badger, just one with better boundaries.
She’s also a Lion secondary. Kida moves in straight lines, speaks her mind, and doesn’t care if you have a problem with that. She does the thing where she’s so honest and blunt it’s almost rude. I suspect that her father is also a Lion secondary - we know that he was reckless and militaristic when he was young, and he seems positive that if Kida even knew about the Heart of Atlantis, she would make the Lion secondary call and dive headfirst into it. Sadly, in the main timeline of the movie the King’s secondary is extremely burned, and he’s basically incapable of any kind of action.
Milo has an idealistic Lion primary that is a bit Burnt at the start of the film. When we meet him, he’s spent years being told that everything he believes is a joke, and he’s finally starting to doubt himself, scraping by just using his Bird secondary. Like a lot of Burnt Lions, Milo latches onto someone (Kida) for their confidence and their purpose. Luckily, once he unBurns there's a Paragon Lion under there that matches up very well with her Badger.
Lilo is an interesting one to sort, because she’s little - and also kinda going through it. Her parents died in a (fairly recent) car crash, and even though they’re not *on screen* and honestly mentioned very little… their absence is felt. Lilo's unofficial family motto is “Ohana means family, family means nobody gets left behind.” But objectively, Lilo’s parents did her behind, and she spends the entire film trying to reconcile that.
Lilo is very young, dealing with a tragedy, and I also think the interpretation that she’s on the autism spectrum makes a lot of sense. We see her having meltdowns, struggling to transition from one activity/location to another, she clearly wants to make these connections with kids her own age, but it’s just… not working. All of that could absolutely point to a five (six?) year old on the spectrum. So the question becomes - okay, so is Lilo acting this way because that’s her personality, or is she acting this way because of the autism/trauma? That's a question I get a lot, and my answer is… I don’t think the traits this system is interested in are created out of nowhere. But, circumstances can absolutely make them louder or softer.
Like, Lilo has a number of very strict rules that tip over into magical thinking. She can only eat peanut butter sandwiches because she has to feed part of her sandwich to her fish, and she can’t feed her fish tuna (dead fish) because that’s “an abomination.” It’s very important that she keeps her fish happy because her fish controls the weather. And THAT’S important… because her parents died in a rainstorm. All of this is 100% a coping mechanism: Lilo is trying to create rules in a chaotic world to feel safer. She’s after a sense of control. This also ties into her fascination with 'goodness' versus 'badness:' she’ll say things like “I’ll be good I promise,” worry about being an “abomination,” make charts of Stitch's "badness level" and also voodoo dolls because “my friends need to be punished.” It’s something she's focused on, and I think it’s because she is aware that… she’s kind of a problem.
Her older sister Nani loves her… but Nani also loses her patience (she’s 21, 22 at most) and Lilo is aware that she stresses out her sister and makes her life more difficult. But, she has trouble changing her behavior because she's, you know, a traumatized autistic six-year-old. Which is really important when it comes to understanding Lilo’s relationship with Stitch. On one level, she identifies the way he leaves all this destruction in his wake. He makes her look better by comparison, and I think she also sees a path towards redemption in teaching Stitch to be “good” (ie - useful and less weird.) When she tells him “You wreck everything you touch, why not try to make something” - I think she’s projecting, and really talking about herself. If Lilo is teaching Stitch to be good, then she has a purpose, and a way to affect the world. We know that feeling powerless is a big thing for Lilo.
So, if I’m putting her in the SHC system, she is definitely an External primary. None of this is about being true to your heart or even being true to another person, this is trying to figure out the rules of the world and putting together a workable system to live with. This focus on morality and punishment is also something I see a lot with young External primaries. While this trait might have been exaggerated by the events of Lilo's life, I do think it’s something that was just in her the whole time.
At first I thought she was a Badger, because of the way Lilo focuses on the importance of family. Also, her first instinct after she thinks Stitch has betrayed her is to outgroup him: “You’re one of them - get out of here.” But “Ohana means family” seems like it was something her parents said a lot, and ‘Stitch isn’t one of us,’ is something she’s heard from Nani (absolutely a Badger primary.) I think a big reason Lilo values hula dancing is because hula dancing is important to Nani.
So now I’m leaning towards Lilo being a young Bird, trying to cobble together a system for understanding the world under non-ideal circumstances. She’s very comfortable believing fantastical things, and is cool with accepting that Stitch is a weird kind of dog. Like Atlantis, Lilo and Stitch is lightly critical of that Badger ethos: the group is wonderful, yes - but the group will not always be there. The conclusion Lilo (and the film) comes to is ‘Ohana means family, family means never getting left behind… but sometimes people leave. Either because they want to, or because they have to. What you have to do is remember them. You make them part of yourself. As Lilo puts it, "I’ll remember you, though. I remember everyone that leaves." I think this is such a lovely way of understanding Bird primaries, which unfortunately have a reputation for being cold and detached.
In terms of secondary, I think Lilo is probably a Lion. She’s very direct, very honest, terrible at lying, and unintentionally trails destruction. Nani tries to give her a kind of script to follow when the social worker comes over - but even in the moment she seems to know it’s kind of a lost cause. However, Lilo is also really young and the narrative doesn’t give her the opportunity to solve many problems. So I would not be surprised if Lilo's secondary looks different when she gets older. She is fascinated by Stitch, and Stitch is a shapeshifter-mimic. He’s kind of a cartoon version of a Snake secondary. Maybe that's a clue that Lilo's best self is a Snake Secondary too, but she hasn’t built a bridge to that part yet. Eh, I could see it either way. Definitely an Improvisational secondary though.
Nani is a very Burnt Badger primary. There’s this recurring thing with her and her love interest David, where they’re kinda dating, or were dating… either way, Nani can’t quite bring herself to let him into her life. Even though she likes him, he likes her, and he even gets along with Lilo. She spends a lot of the film looking like she’s 100% focused on her little sister in a Snake primary way… but Burnt Badgers look like miserable, stressed-out Snakes, and that is absolutely Nani. She clearly used to have a big community - at one point she even tries to leverage it for a job. But I think she responded to the death of her parents by closing up, refusing to let anyone new close to her. She might lose them too, and that would hurt too much.
This film is also really good at putting Nani in situations that would be really rough on a Badger primary specifically. Nani clearly feels deeply connected to her Hawaiian culture - she’s an accomplished hula dancer, she loves surfing, and in the most heartbreaking scene of the movie she sings “Aloha Oe” to Lilo, when she thinks child protective services are going to take her away in the morning. This is famously a song written by deposed Hawaiian Queen Liliʻuokalani, after she was forced to leave her people. These are all things that Nani pulls on to give her strength. However… she is also working as an honestly quite objectified waitress/hula dancer in a theme park-ified version of Hawaii catering to tourists. She’s clearly not happy there, and it's an important moment when she leaves.
Even when she’s in really serious trouble, Nani can’t bring herself to tell anyone what’s going on, to get help or even just emotional support - and that's the Burnt Badger talking. When she is absolutely at her wit’s end and has no idea what to do, she grabs David and she grabs Lilo and they all go surfing. It’s that Badger primary need for community, even if there’s no way that community is going to help.
Nani is probably a Bird secondary. She practices when she's nervous and has a lot of skills - but is much more overwhelmed during the wacky finale than Lilo, and definitely needs a second to get it together and figure out the situation. She conceptualizes ‘dealing with Lilo’ as a skill that she has learned and gotten better at: she’ll build little ‘traps’ to catch her younger sister, and can translate things into “Lilo.” I think she may have constructed a bit of an Actor Bird model for dealing with Lilo (and another for dealing with her boss.) Lilo will use bits of her system to argue with Nani, and clearly expects this strategy to work.
LILO. Ohana means family. Family means no one gets left behind, or forgotten.
NANI. I hate when you use ‘ohana’ against me.
CAPTAIN AMELIA SMOLLET (2002)
If Nani and Kida share a deep connection their cultural history, Captain Amelia and Kida share this incredibly direct, blunt, borderline rude Lion secondary. Only Amelia's is is less 'cultural misunderstanding' and more just... British.
Captain Amelia absolutely rubs Jim Hawkins and Doctor Doppler the wrong way (an occupational hazard of being a very loud Lion secondary.) But she also comes off as extremely trustworthy, which you get from the You-Move secondaries (Lion and Badger.) Amelia is a version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Alexander Smollett (just also a cat girl, and in space) and this bit from Treasure Island suits Treasure Planet equally well: “Contrary to all my notions, I believe you have managed to get two honest men on board with you, that man [Captain Smollet] and John Silver.”
Of course, Captain Amelia wins over Jim and Doppler once they understand that she wants her crew to be equally direct right back at her. She wants all the information, as quickly as possible, so she can make the best decisions. Her eyes light up when Doppler tells her she’s wrong about how supernovas work... because she’s able to use the new knowledge to create a daredevil way to escape the situation. Near the end of the film, Jim comes up with a crazy solution that involves a piece of alien tech. He knows how the tech works, doesn’t have time to explain it. But because they’ve had enough practice being honest with each other, Amelia just does what he says - no questions asked.
This is also why she gets so offended when John Silver tries to flatter her… and Silver’s good at flattering. He charms his crew, he charms Jim. But Amelia tells him to “keep that kind of flim-flammery for your space court floozies” because of course the two captains on opposite sides of the mutiny should be foils. Silver makes Jim feel important and special. Captain Amelia tells him point-blank when he’s being an idiot and gives him no special treatment. The nuanced position this film takes is that Jim… kinda needs both.
In this movie about treasure hunting, Captain Amelia is the only character who doesn’t seem to care about the “Loot of a Thousand Worlds" at all. She is here to do her job, and is deeply skeptical about treasure hunting in general. Her speech at her First Mate’s funeral makes her priorities very clear: “Mr. Arrow was a fine spacer. Finer than most of us can ever hope to be. But he knew the risks, as do we all. Resume your posts. We carry on.” Her highest praise is that Arrow did his job well... and part of doing your job well is making peace with the fact that you might not make it out alive. She takes her job, her title, and her ship extremely seriously.
So, Amelia is definitely an Idealist primary, and her Cause seems to revolve around being the best Captain possible and… going on adventures. This is also the case with Doppler, who she ends up with at the end. He frames his treasure hunting trip in very Badger primary language when he’s talking to Jim’s very Badger Primary mom… but in reality he just wants to go on an adventure.
I could honestly see either Lion or Bird primary for Amelia. But, the fact that she’s ex-military and still in good enough standing to write Jim a recommendation letter makes me lean Bird. (I think a Double Lion Amelia would have burned more bridges.) Also, the rules and organizational system she lives by seem to exist outside of her in a very Commodore Norrington sort of way. It’s not something she feels internally, and this is comforting. Honestly, Amelia gives off very Commodore Norrington energy in general, and he’s a pretty loud Bird primary.
HELEN "ELASTIGIRL" PARR (2004)
( & Bob/Mr. Incredible, Edna Mode)
Helen’s superpower is ‘flexibility,’ so of course she’s going to be an Improvisational secondary. I'm going with Lion instead of Snake because - like Captain Amelia and Kida - Helen is very comfortable being incredibly direct. She actively sets up confrontations, waits in the dark for Bob after he stays out late with Frozone, then actually gets in a plane to confront him when she thinks he’s having an affair.
Bob Parr is also a Lion secondary, and unlike Helen (who is able to turn down the volume during Dash's parent-teacher conference) he has trouble even softening what he says, phrasing something in a way that’s palatable to the person he’s talking to. That trait gets him in trouble with Buddy/Syndrome, then his boss at the insurance company, and there’s also the implication that the government keeps relocating them because Bob keeps blowing their cover. (This is 100% the case in a cut scene set at a neighborhood barbecue, where Bob appears to cut off a finger and instead breaks the knife.)
I also think the fact that Helen and Bob are both Lion secondaries is a big part of what makes their relationship functional. Lion secondaries seem to really value the opportunity to have arguments and fights… while also knowing the interaction is fundamentally safe, and isn’t going to spill over into the other parts of their life. When Bob gets back late, he and Helen fight in a way that honestly just seems like their way of blowing off steam. They’re both able to turn it off completely when the kids walk into the room.
Helen also calls herself out for “overreacting” and has to force herself to take a moment to think when she first figures out that Bob is lying, a very Lion secondary moment. She gives Violet the insanely Lion secondary advice that “When the time comes, you’ll know what to do. It’s in your blood.” Edna Mode is also a cartoonishly loud Lion secondary, and I'll bet that shared secondary is a big part of the reason she adores the Parrs. Also, Helen loves her motorcycles, which at least in fiction is a very Lion-secondary coded mode of transportation.
Helen’s flexibility extends to her primary as well. When we first meet Elastigirl in the “documentary” prologue, she’s completely happy doing the superhero thing while Mr. Incredible is already thinking about settling down. But, in the main timeline of the movie, Helen seems perfectly happy doing the suburbia thing and raising the kids. Then in the sequel, after the Deavors convince her that she can do the most good by being a poster child for non-threatening Supers, she has a fantastic time doing that instead. The fact that she’s able to change her worldview so easily without having a big emotional crisis about it (the way that Bob does) makes me think she’s probably a Bird primary. That difference in primaries seems to be where most of the friction in their relationship comes from.
Helen actually tells us her philosophy in the sequel: “If laws are unjust there are laws to change them, otherwise it’s chaos” and “World is what it is, we have to adapt.” It’s a bit Badger flavored - work within the system, adapt to the system - but the way she lays it out is Bird. And then she gets a little tipsy and starts debating philosophy with the villain for fun. Which is a very Bird primary activity.
Violet feels very at odds with both her family and her world… and since she’s a Badger primary, that’s especially rough. She wants to fit into a community, but there is no community for her. She’s the only member of the family who actively does not want her powers: “We act normal, Mom! I want to be normal (...) What do you know about normal? What does anyone in this family know about normal?” We also get the line, “Mom and Dad’s lives might be in danger, or worse - their marriage.” Which is definitely a joke about Violet’s slightly cartoonish Badger primary priorities.
It makes absolute sense that she’s so hung up on the idea of popular dreamboat Tony, at the center of so much community, since that's exactly what she wants. And because she herself is very not normal, she tries to hide - both with her superpower and with her hair. Violet is the first computer animated character who wears their hair long and loose, and the animators put in the effort because it’s so tied in with her character. As she gets more and more in tune with her family over the course of the film, the way Violet wears her hair changes. Her mom tucks it behind her ear, her dad comments that he likes this new way she’s wearing it better. She eventually pushes it back with a headband because she’s not hiding from them anymore. Violet is happy and effective being a part of the superhero team that is her family. It’s interesting that her powers (invisiblity, creating force-fields around herself) are fantastic support/team-attack powers, but not that useful on their own.
However, one more source of friction between Violet and the rest of the family is that she’s the only non-Lion secondary. Her little brother Dash is a Lion. (He’s probably a Double Lion like his father, they’ve both even got a little of that Glory Hound Lion primary thing.) But Violet’s powers keep her out of sight, she is the opposite of confrontational. It took me a second to recognize her as a Snake secondary, because most fictional Snakes are much more comfortable around people… but Violet is also in a less-than-ideal situation. Still, she is observant, good at picking up on what’s going on around her, and uses those things to solve problems. It’s her idea to track down Syndrome using the coordinates he’s put in the rocket, and in the sequel she’s the one who figures out how to use Jack Jack like a gun, and successfully turns the out-of-control ship around.
Violet is sneaky, using her abilities to spy on her parents and stow away on her mom's trip. She doesn’t like using her snake secondary at other people - she’s very self-contained - but she is more than happy to direct it out at the world. Violet is also perceptive when it comes to people, and will often just come right out and say things like “Are we going to talk about it… the elephant in the room” or “I think Dad has made some excellent progress today, but I think it’s time we wind down now.” Which can look a little like Lion... but in this case, it's definitely Neutral Snake.
Jane ~ Snake / Snake, models Badger / Badger
King Kashekim ~ Snake / Burnt Lion
Lilo ~ Bird / Lion (possibly Bird / Snake)
Nani ~ Burnt Badger / Bird
Captain Amelia ~ Bird / Lion
Helen/Elastigirl ~ Bird / Lion
Bob/Mr. Incredible ~ Lion / Lion
(art credit to Cursed Concepts for the beautiful pins I have used to illustrate this series. They're actually having a charity sale right now (December 27th-31th) to benefit Make A Wish, so head on over if you like their style and want to maybe snag a deep cut like Jane, Giselle, or Eilonwy.)
