Mulan means a lot to me, okay
When I was a little kid, Disney’s Mulan was one of my very favorite movies (between that and my unwavering love for Robin Hood, a lot of my current personality traits should be easy to guess). And there were a lot of reasons, not least of which are:
a) the gorgeous animation (the avalanche, the smoke, the fire, it’s just so incredible);
b) the music (LET’S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS); and
c) Mulan, come on guys, it’s a girl who cheats her way into the army and becomes a hero even when no one–not even herself–believes in her, you had to know that was going to be my JAM.
But…like…it was also one of my favorite love stories (I also really love Beauty and the Beast, which will get its own rant someday), which I recently discovered is not a standard opinion. A lot of people spend a lot of time making smart remarks about Shang’s gay crisis. And…this might have just been me, but the change between Ping/Mulan never struck me as the pertinent part of the relationship. I figured that, yeah, Shang was 100% Here For That even though Ping was his subordinate and therefore off-limits. And then I figured that Shang was still 100% Here For That after watching Mulan dismantle a palace and light a warlord on fire, with the added bonus that she wasn’t his subordinate. So my assessment was that Shang was in love with the person, the earnest but slightly awkward person who almost flunked out of the army and specializes in haphazard plans based on blowing shit up and looks startled whenever people like them. And since he was in love with the person, his anger was because that person lied to him, not because that person had a different set of bits than he’d originally assumed, and his interest was in the person, not in their face or their clothes.
And that meant a lot to me as a kid for reasons that I wasn’t really sure how to articulate.
Here’s the thing. I am conventionally fairly attractive, through a combination of good genes and good fortune, and I recognize the inherent advantage that entails. I’m not a show-stopper or anything, but my features are symmetrical and my skin is usually clear and…well, to be honest, the triple-D cup size means that the rest of that stuff almost doesn’t matter. My shoulders are too broad to look like a pinup and I’m too short to look leggy and curvaceous and I’m too curvy to be ‘petite’, but I did okay on the physical end of the spectrum. I could probably understand if someone came up and asked to buy me a drink or something. I consistently cannot understand when someone shows interest, romantic or otherwise, in me once I’ve opened my mouth. You know the running joke of ‘well I’m not stopping traffic but at least I have a good personality’? Yeah, my assessment of myself is the exact opposite. None of my self-esteem issues related to the way I look, they’re all about the person who lives under my skin.
And Mulan is pretty, she’s lovely, no one questions that, she doesn’t ever seem to question that. But she always looks surprised when people like her, and she tries so hard to act the way people expect her to act, and she looks ready to take punishment for acting outside the expectations, even when she’s been killing armies and slaying warlords and saving emperors. I like to think she’s like me: she knows the skin is pretty, but she’s terrified that the person underneath isn’t lovable. And then she goes to the army and breaks laws and dishonors her family. And she makes friends who risk their lives for that person, and she gains respect for that person, and Shang falls in love with that person, and it’s all done on that person’s merits, whether you want to call that person Mulan or Ping or whatever, not on the merits of how pretty her face is or how busty she is or how elegant or well-mannered she can act.
And…that meant a lot to me as a scared, damaged kid. It means a lot to me, now, currently, in my differently scared, differently damaged almost-adult self. I probably haven’t made a lot of sense here, come to think of it. If you persevered all the way to the end, I tip my hat to you.
