WHY EVERY GIRL SHOULD WATCH MULAN

 WHY EVERY GIRL SHOULD WATCH MULAN:

A girl became a soldier, the soldier became a leader, and the leader became the legend.

I remember being born in the age of fluttering gowns and dancing steps, princesses seeking princes, getting ready for balls, going to great lengths to achieve something as petty as a man's attention. From Cinderella's lie of midnight strike, Ariel's innocent belief of leaving her world for a man, and sleeping beauty abandoning the three faries for the man she just met. All these stories taught us one thing, going after boys will either end up with us slipping into a coma or ending up eating a poisonous apple. Either with a prince who'll leave you alone in the palace in the end, or you losing your voice.

For the longest time, the tales were of misery, they were of defiance for the wrong cause, they advocated vanity. The ambition was limited, and the ending was of fantasy far away from the land of reality. The ideals were of chasing behind man not being something yourself. These fairytales were wrong, their starting depicted life with suffering easing at the sight of man. A knight in shining armour will save us from all the troubling, he'll sweep us off of our feet and take us away to his castle. Hence a life of fortune and love awaits our arrival. but the bridge was always someone. the connection between us and the happiness was irreversibly a man. 

Mulan though with its fair share of wrongs was the first right in the longest history of patriarchial fairytales we went to sleep listening to. It showed us a hero instead of an object of desire. It filled all the shortcoming in those stories, prioritizing character over beauty, courage over vanity. It showed a woman in a light so different, as a warrior who'll save the dynasty by her bravery, who stood where men tremble, who wins where men failed.

Among the many things that this one bold animated film taught, is was, how in the end for the honour that she thought she had betrayed, she rejects the emperor's offer and returns home. Her devotion to her family though contradictory to the set norms was still strong. She picked up the sword to spare her father the pain and horror of a war he had faced before. Being a daughter, the expected way to bring honour to a household was to get married, she chooses an option that wasn't even there. 

Mulan is the depiction that a woman can be non-domestic and still conquer kingdoms, defeat enemies, and win over evil. That though being a girl is dressing up, and having tea parties, dancing and having a husband, but it's not all about being a woman. It showed that all those things are one aspect, this movie was the narrative that was missing from the picture. Fighting for the defence of what's right is no longer only son's job. In Mulan, we found the fighter so many of us had inside but suppressed. Courage, bravery were never the attributes for one gender, we made them. We reduced the compliments to superficial traits, we made vanity a quality to cherish. More so, we made an entire gender believe that they were objects of beautification. 

Mulan though with a lot of downsides, was one good thing in the longest journey. A girl with a daring ambition, who was way more than what society was letting her be.