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When I share my story with people, especially in more casual settings, I joke that I’m like a real-life Disney princess. Usually, I reference Mulan as she’s one of the more famous Disney characters and I find that her internal conflict most parallels mine. (Mulan technically isn’t a princess but she is included in the line-up.)
The rigid dress code, the constant posturing of femininity, the threat of being coerced into an arranged marriage, the suppression of my right to speak my mind, and being stuck in my bedroom; my life (and the lives of many other girls and women like me) in many ways resembled those of female characters in fairy tales such as Rapunzel or The Little Mermaid.
Considering the real world is much darker than those of Disney’s modern adaptations of fairy tales, these stories provided me with a hopeful chance for a happy ending. When I watched Mulan, I could believe that I, too, could escape the daunting expectations that my family had for me. Being an avid animation fan, I continued watching and enjoying the new Disney releases years after my friends lost interest.
I was 16 years old when Tangled, Disney’s adaptation of Rapunzel was released. The film introduces Rapunzel with the song titled When Will My Life Begin? In this upbeat number, Rapunzel, a young woman who had spent most of her life trapped in a tall, isolated tower, sings of filling the boredom and loneliness she feels with various activities. Later in the film, when she escapes from the tower, she sings a reprise of When Will My Life Begin? and I vividly remember how much it moved me back then. Looking back, I realize that I hadn’t even comprehended how literally I related to this song.
Once Rapunzel gently touches the ground, she sings with wonder and delight, her energy increasing with each line:
Just smell the grass, the dirt
Just like I dreamed they’d be
Just feel that summer breeze
The way it’s calling me
For like the first time ever
I’m completely free
I could go running, and racing
And dancing, and chasing
And leaping, and bounding
Hair flying, heart pounding
And splashing, and reeling
And finally feeling
That’s when my life begins
Rapunzel could not do these things before because she was confined to a limited space in her tower. Now that she was outside of the tower, she could engage with the world rather than merely observe it from a distance.
When I talk about the daily freedoms that are deprived of women in the Muslim world, especially ones who wear hijab, the activities that I refer to are many of the ones mentioned in this song. Swimming, running and dancing. Touching grass, dirt, and sand. Feeling the sun on your skin and the wind blow through your hair. It is the objectification of the female body that makes the hijab sick and perverted, but it is the stripping away of these beautiful, earthly joys that make the hijab cruel.
I watched The Little Mermaid when I was older, too, and was struck by how much I could relate to Ariel’s Part of Your World.
Ariel, a mermaid princess who is in love with a human man and bored of her royal duties, is curious about life on land. She yearns for adventure and romance.
A lump in my throat formed when I heard Ariel sing:
What would I give if I could live out of these waters?
What would I pay to spend a day warm on the sand?
Betcha on land, they understand
That they don’t reprimand their daughters
Bright young women, sick of swimming
Ready to stand
I had plenty of teenage angst, but this wasn’t that. I was seriously frustrated with the constant, unfair restrictions that my family was putting on me. With each year, the rules I had to follow were increasing tenfold. Every move I made was met with punishment for being sexually provocative. My family’s definition of “sexually provocative” ranged from me wearing a skirt or dress that went below my knees (instead of all the way down to the ground) to taking a walk around the block with my friends after school (my parents assumed that we were meeting boys).
I was sick of being punished for things I didn’t do, and frankly, things that I didn’t even want to do! I wanted to be a good Muslim girl. If Allah didn’t want me running around with boys before I got married, then fine, I’ll just hang out with my friends and eat corn-in-a-cup until then. But nothing I did could convince my parents (and teachers, and uncles, and so on) that I wasn’t constantly trying to seduce men.
Eventually, with time spent doing research on this religion and plenty of soul-searching, I learned that this would never, ever change. I learned that, in the context of Islam, that they were actually justified in assuming that I’m a “whore” under most circumstances because I am a woman and Allah made women that way. I learned that this was the entire point of the hijab: it assumes that my natural state of being is “a piece of ass that’s flaunting herself,” and aims to fix it. Allah and I had our disagreements in the past, but this was too much. I turned my back on him and walked away.
Sometime after leaving Islam, I rewatched Mulan, which was one of my childhood favorites. I sobbed when I listened to Reflection, a song I was so familiar with, yet felt like I was hearing for the first time.
When she fails to impress her matchmaker and disappoints her family, Mulan sings:
Look at me
I will never pass for a perfect bride
Or a perfect daughter
Can it be I’m not meant to play this part?
Now I see
That if I were truly to be myself
I would break my family’s heart
Every word hits me like a truck.
Then,
Who is that girl I see staring straight back at me?
Why is my reflection someone I don’t know?
Somehow I cannot hide who I am, though I’ve tried
When will my reflection show who I am inside?
Mulan has a struggle that is both external and internal. She understands that she will never make her family happy, and while she cannot play the part of the perfect bride and daughter, she also cannot be her true self. She floats between failing at playing her role and passively accepting it. Due to her oppressive surroundings, she has a lack of faith and connectedness with herself.
Since the first time I watched Mulan as an ex-Muslim, I still cannot listen to Reflection without tearing up. This song encapsulates a struggle that may very well last my entire lifetime.
This was powerful. Thanks for sharing