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Beauty and the Beast. It's one of the only animated movies ever nominated for an academy award for best picture, it contains some of the most incredible and nuanced animation in any movie ever, all made under a super tight deadline in about half the time it normally takes to create an animated movie.

However... she falls in love with him despite *gasp* being a jerk and imprisoning her! So, let's talk about it.

Part 1: Beauty

I think the thing to understand, first and foremost, is that this is not a fantasy story for ugly men, it's a fantasy for girls. The Beast isn't monstrous in any way that makes him less masculine, he's not enfeebled or effeminized, if anything, it actually accentuates his masculinity. He's even more handsome than he was as a human!

And "you were awarded for being pure of heart" is ultimately just the ego flattering dessert for having a cool, wild, mysterious, exotic taboo boyfriend.

The moralizing message isn't the fun part. The fun part is the sexy fantasy! Why was "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" not a good movie? Because it's not a sexy fantasy! This movie had women fantasizing about the creepy puritan nutcase for gods sake.

Who cares that the original was basically just propaganda for arranged marriage, in order to get girls more comfortable with marrying intimidating older men? I'm having fun!

Part 2: Beast

Do you hate Disney? Well, so does Dreamworks, seeing as they were a studio founded solely out of revenge by a gigantic asshole. And this is where Shrek comes in.

You can say what you will, but if Shrek succeeded in taking Disney down a peg, it was just due to actually leaning into the message, about body positivity and how beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Unattractive people can fall in love too! That's actually really nice.

Uhhh... yeah, and that's pretty much it. Oh, and both of these movies are really good by the way. I have more power than you do. You can have both.

Because I'm here to tell you... it's okay...