Let’s talk about feminine archetypes. There’s a reason I care about stories like Cinderella and Frozen—and it’s not nostalgia or moral panic. It’s because I’ve worked with hundreds of men who feel disoriented, disconnected, or quietly defeated. They don’t always have the words for it, but often what’s missing is a sense of inner structure—a living connection to something deeper than productivity, success, or even self-improvement. What they’re really craving is truth, initiation, and meaning.
And here’s the thing: we become the stories we consume. If those stories are hollow or confused, we carry that fracture within us. That’s why it matters what our culture teaches us about strength, identity, and the balance between masculine and feminine energy. Especially now.
We’re told today’s stories are empowering and progressive—but when you strip away the surface, something else is going on. Compare a classic like Cinderella with a modern hit like Frozen, and the shift isn’t just aesthetic. It’s ideological. And more to the point—it’s archetypal.
Cinderella: The Quiet Power of the Feminine Archetype
Cinderella isn’t weak. She isn’t passive. She’s patient. She’s graceful under pressure. She represents a kind of power our culture has forgotten how to respect—the inner strength that doesn’t shout, doesn’t dominate, doesn’t try to control everything. Cinderella’s strength is archetypally feminine. She endures, she nurtures, she holds the line with quiet dignity. And in the end, the world around her changes—not because she forced it, but because she remained true.
This isn’t about gender—it’s about symbolic truth. Cinderella is written as a woman because the feminine expresses itself most richly through women. But her story speaks to something in all of us. The part that suffers. The part that waits. The part that trusts the unseen.
Frozen’s Elsa: Trauma Framed as Strength
Elsa, by contrast, is not a vision of strength. She’s a traumatised woman who retreats from the world, isolates herself, and calls it freedom. “Let It Go” is framed as a liberation anthem, but look closer: she’s building walls, cutting off connection, armouring herself emotionally. That’s not empowerment—it’s fear wrapped in glitter.
Elsa doesn’t heal. She withdraws. Her powers are defensive and isolating. And yet the story teaches us to celebrate that. It quietly tells us that shutting people out is strong, that emotional suppression is maturity, that true freedom means going it alone.
But it’s not just Elsa. The male characters in Frozen are no better served. Kristoff, while likeable, is emotionally awkward and largely passive. Hans, the only character who initially shows confidence and initiative, is revealed to be manipulative and deceitful. Masculinity itself becomes suspicious—either incompetent or dangerous. There’s no positive vision of the masculine here. No model of strength, wisdom, or protection that children—boys or girls—can look to and admire.
The end result? A film that disconnects girls from their inner feminine and boys from their healthy masculine. A story that invites mistrust in the very energies required for real relationship and balance.
Disney’s Narrative Agenda: Female Over Feminine
Here’s what’s really happening. Frozen and similar modern narratives aren’t just telling stories about women—they’re attempting to rewrite archetypes. Disney, through public statements and internal materials like the Stories Matter campaign, has been explicit in its desire to revise older tales to reflect modern cultural values. But the cost of this revision is profound.
Instead of honouring the timeless feminine archetype—the one that appears across cultures and myths as the soul, the nurturer, the transformer—Disney now promotes a narrower version of female identity. Elsa is a “strong female character,” but she’s not a feminine one. That distinction matters. Female is biological. Feminine is archetypal.
The feminine is never about independence or firepower—that belongs to the archetypal masculine. That doesn’t mean women can’t express those traits. But when independence and firepower become the default expression for female characters, and feminine virtues like receptivity, nurturance, and patience are discarded or mocked, we’re not just changing the characters—we’re changing the purpose of the story itself. Throughout human history, stories have existed to reveal timeless truths, to initiate us into deeper understandings of life, and to guide the soul through symbolic transformation. Disney, for much of the last century, held that sacred responsibility in the modern West. But in replacing the symbolic feminine with a politicised image of the ‘strong female character,’ Disney is no longer stewarding archetypal wisdom—it is actively dismantling it. This is not evolution. It is a betrayal of the psychological and cultural function of story. And the cost is not just confusion—it is the erosion of a symbolic language that once helped us grow.
The feminine doesn’t manifest as dominance or conquest. It emerges in qualities like stillness, receptivity, and healing presence. It endures, nourishes, and transforms not by force, but by essence. These energies live within all of us—regardless of sex—and they are essential to becoming whole. But when female characters are shaped to reflect only masculine expressions of power, the symbolic feminine is sidelined. What we’re told is empowerment is, in fact, a rejection of the feminine itself.
In doing so, Disney presents a version of womanhood that is biologically female but archetypally masculine—and emotionally incomplete. What we are left with are female leads who seem powerful but are spiritually disconnected. The result is a flattening of story, a corruption of archetype, and a generation of children growing up with an impoverished understanding of what it means to be strong, to be whole, and to be human.
Frozen as Propaganda: What Are We Really Teaching Our Children?
Frozen isn’t just a confused story—it’s propaganda. Not loud and obvious, but subtle and emotional. It rewards you for cheering on unresolved trauma. Even something as simple as putting a Frozen poster on your daughter’s bedroom wall might seem harmless—but over time, it installs a symbolic image of what power and identity look like. If that image is built on unresolved trauma and emotional isolation, it subtly teaches her to admire exactly the thing that disconnects her from her true nature.
It encourages you to see disconnection as strength and to abandon the very energies that make you human. Especially the feminine.
Why Feminine Archetypes Matter to the Work I Do With Men
The men I work with are often high performers—capable, driven, and committed. But beneath that, many are carrying a quiet ache. They’ve built successful lives but still feel something essential is missing. It’s not competence they lack, but clarity. They’re unsure of what it really means to live and lead as a man in today’s world—especially in relationship.
Part of the struggle comes from growing up without strong, grounded male role models. But it’s made worse by the cultural narratives they’ve absorbed. When stories like Frozen distort the feminine—framing devotion, receptivity, or emotional warmth as weak—and simultaneously paint the masculine as either dangerous or irrelevant, men are left adrift. They can’t find their place, not just in society, but in their own hearts.
This is why I care so deeply about stories. They are not just entertainment. They shape the inner world—and the inner world shapes everything else. If we want men to thrive, we must restore stories that speak truthfully to both the masculine and the feminine—and help us remember how they’re meant to dance together.
We Need Better Stories
We don’t need louder or flashier. We need truer. We need stories that remind us what real strength looks like—strength that includes both the sword and the open heart. That honours both fire and water. Cinderella has more to teach us than we remember. And Frozen—well, maybe it teaches us something too. Just not what it thinks it does.
So let’s reclaim the stories that nourish us. Let’s stop handing our sons and daughters narratives that disconnect them from who they really are. Let’s remember the power of the feminine, in men and women, and start building a culture that helps us become whole again.
References
Streiff, M., & Dundes, L. (2017). Frozen in Time: How Disney Gender-Stereotypes Its Most Powerful Princess. Social Sciences, 6(1), 10. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6010010
The Walt Disney Company. (2021). Stories Matter. https://storiesmatter.thewaltdisneycompany.com/
