Although Disney has never shied away from a certain amount of darkness in its animated feature films — this is, after all, the studio that notoriously introduced millions of traumatized children to the concept of seeing your parents murdered in front of you— the corporation has always had a particularly complicated relationship with its princesses. Decades before the first thinkpiece bewailing the sexist heteronormativity of Cinderella or the passive femininity of Sleeping Beauty, Disney was already in the habit of sanitizing the source material in its princess oeuvre, skipping over the gore, the grit, and the occasional not-so-happy ending.

Examples abound: the stepsisters in Disney’s Cinderella are ugly, cruel, and grasping — but they don't cut off their own toes to try to fit into the glass slipper, as in the original fairy tale. The Little Mermaid as told by Hans Christian Anderson was a devastating story of a girl who gives up everything (and eventually takes her own life), all for the love of a man who sees her only as a friend; in Disney’s hands, it became a tale of self-actualization and empowerment to a banging soundtrack of crustacean calypso. Snow White, the first ever animated Disney feature film, gave its villainous queen a less-macabre comeuppance even as it left the central theme of savage female intrasexual competition intact.

But there’s censorship, and then there’s social engineering — and so perhaps it was inevitable that the corporation which prohibits depictions of smoking alongside impalements and beheadings would also, eventually, decide that it wasn't enough just to do away with the darker or more sexually tinged elements of its fairy tales. The whole idea of princesses needed to be reimagined for the modern age, brought into compliance with an entertainment landscape ruled by the strong female character, a.k.a. women with hot bodies and great hair who otherwise behave just like men. Contemporary heroines weren’t looking for a happily-ever-after in the arms of a handsome prince; they were tough, smart, sexually adventurous, and possessed of the formerly male-coded inclination to solve their conflicts by punching things.

Hence, around the same time as the emotionally aloof female “badass” became a staple of the action movie genre, the Disney heroine also underwent a character makeover. Instead of waiting around to be rescued, the new princess would save herself, and sometimes her male love interest as well — although love was also increasingly uninteresting to her. Tangled, the first animated Disney film to feature the trope of the self-rescuing princess, was the leading edge of a vibe shift that not only ushered in a new spate of empowered princesses or princess-like figures (see: Brave, Moana, Frozen) but also two whole new categories of movie: the villain origin story (see: Maleficent, Cruella) and the live-action reboot, in which one of the animated Disney movies beloved by millennials was remade with a fresh new cast (and, often, a more politically correct aesthetic.) Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Mulan, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid: all were reimagined for more enlightened age… or, perhaps more accurately, for a generation of millennial parents who wanted to share these stories with their own children but couldn't stomach the unwokeness of the originals.

Fast forward ten years, and the old-school Disney princess isn’t just gone; she’s become an object of scorn and ridicule, including by the young women for whom headlining one of these films is the biggest of big breaks. When the live-action reboot of Snow White announced last year that it had found its titular heroine in actress Rachel Ziegler, Ziegler made no secret of her contempt for the 1937 original. Her Snow White, she told Variety, would be better: “She’s not going to be saved by the prince. And she's not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be,” she said.

In short: the Disney princess is dead; long live the Disney girlboss.

Buried within all this self-congratulatory backpatting about the girlbossification of the princess is a sense that Disney — along with a certain subset of its millennial feminist fanbase — is trying to both eat its cake and have it, much in the same way Greta Gerwig did when she claimed that her Barbie movie was both “doing the thing and subverting the thing.” The problem is, the new Disney princess is neither subversive nor revelatory; if anything, she offers a decidedly one-dimensional vision of what a strong female character (and, by extension, women in general) can aspire to.

This is true even by comparison to the original Disney princess, who may be dated in her aspirations, or in her conception of femininity, but who isn't without complexity. Often, her journey involves various errors in judgment, mistakes made out of foolishness or hubris or both, and the challenges she overcomes on her way to happily-ever-after are at least partly self-inflicted. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty both end up comatose because of their painful naïvete. Ariel, the Little Mermaid, renders herself voiceless and disfigured for the sake of a crush. Even Mulan, in her original animated incarnation, has absolutely no skills as a warrior when she impulsively disguises herself as a man and joins the imperial army in her father's place; she has to be humbled before she becomes a hero. In short, the archetypal Disney heroine may be a damsel in distress, but she is not a pure victim — which is one crucial way in which the Disneyfied versions of these stories nevertheless preserve the spirit of the originals. Fairy tales weren’t just for entertainment; they were etiquette guides, with useful social lessons buried underneath all the magic and swashbuckling. Older Disney films wear their morals on their sleeve: Don’t be rude. Don’t be selfish. Be kind to animals and old people. Treat others as you want to be treated— and endeavor to do this even when they treat you like shit.

The girlbossification of Disney princesses dispenses with such facile lessons in the name of feminism. The new Disney heroine takes no shit, but also has no flaws, and hence doesn't make the sort of bad choices that might lead to personal growth. She doesn’t even have a normal hero’s arc, because nothing is ever her fault; her only problem is everybody else, the haters and losers, conspiring to keep her down. The live-action remakes of Disney’s animated classics are especially stark illustrations of what happens when you empower a character at the expense of her enlightenment: the new Ariel, for instance, suffers from amnesia after she trades her voice for legs and a shot at love. With no memory at all of what she's done or why, there is no uncomfortable reckoning with the foolishness of her choice. The new Mulan never has to suffer the humiliation of realizing she's in over her head; the live-action movie styles her as a gifted warrior whose only true adversary is the patriarchy that fears a powerful woman.

What’s especially disappointing about this is that when you think about it (which I have, probably too much), there's nothing wrong with these characters as originally styled, even the ones who rank at the bottom of those circa-2010s Buzzfeed lists of the Most Feminist Princesses. Take Snow White, who is certainly not a girlboss, but nor is she some kind of loser. She maintains a sunny disposition despite being abused by her evil stepmother; she's resourceful and resilient; she even earns her place in the home of the dwarves by cooking, cleaning, and keeping house. And while she’s not a powerful leader, she is nevertheless a good and civilizing influence on the people around her, all of whom understand that there’s value in what she has to offer. Sure, she can’t throw a punch to save her life, but the whole point is that she doesn't have to; the things that make her a threat to the evil queen — her beauty, her charm, her willingness to care for others who care for her in return — are also the assets that make her beloved, that make other people want to help her. In a world where it’s become de rigueur for the princess to rescue herself, there's something refreshing about a story where a person's survival is less about having a particular set of skills and more about having earned the trust and love of the people around her.

Contrast this with Zeigler’s Snow White, who lusts only for power and apparently sees no value in love, connection, companionship, or care. I could point out that people like this tend to make for terrible leaders, let alone role models, but what really grates is the utter lack of imagination on display. Disney has anointed itself the engineer of a whole new generation of female heroines — and yet the only way they can think to make a woman strong is to make her more masculine, or less human, or both.

— Kat Rosenfield