Cher and Disney Princess Syndrome—What to Expect from Motherless Girls
Motherless girls, the princess archetype in classic fairytales, are forgotten—if not hated—by a fatherless world.
I didn’t realize this until very recently: Disney princesses are all motherless.
Our culture, once shaped by princesses, now promotes “independent” women.
Disney princess movies are classics for a reason. Only things that withstand time are worthy. The truth cannot be found in ephemerality.
Cinderella is by no means a damsel in distress waiting helplessly for a prince to save her. She’s stronger than any women who (claim they) don’t need a man can be.
Belle doesn’t fall in love with the beast through a dance and a few dates. The beast must first overcome his selfish desire and let her go. She must return for him, and he must die to be born again to be with her. (Did I just twist Beauty and the Beast to be biblical)
How much bitterness it must take for one to hate Disney princesses—for one to think that Frozen, a feminist trash, has more depth than Cinderella, an epitome of feminine strength.
Seriously—do you all still remember what Taylor Swift used to be like?
She was the country sweetheart our fathers secretly adored. She used to sing something like this—
“I hate that stupid old pick-up truck you never let me drive
you’re a red-neck heartbreaker really bad at lying”
If you come around saying you’re sorry to me
my daddy’s gonna show you how sorry you’ll be
Taylor used to be a daddy’s girl. She doesn’t dare to be one anymore—these days, nothing offends like a daddy’s girl, even if this girl is motherless. No one feels sorry for Cinderella anymore—sure, her father died, but at least she knew he loved her.
Cher in Clueless (1995) is a perfect example of motherless girls.
I am also motherless, though I have a mother in the house.
Combining Cher, Disney princesses, and my self-reflection, I want to delve into motherless women—a forgotten group in modern society—and explore their common strengths and problems.
In this article:
3 Major traits
5 Problems to conquer
3 Major traits—they are fairytale-level feminine👰🏻♀️
🦋First and foremost
They want a fairy godmother more than any other girls. They lack female role models and don’t know what it means to be a woman. And this alone leads to a series of issues, including:
Self-idolatry (the counterfeit, which I will discuss in the next section)
Self-nurturing (the merit)
Motherless girls nurture everything that moves and breathes.
Cinderella and Snow White pour their spirits over animals—you may think that’s just an old-fashioned way to portray fairy tales, but the truth is, motherless girls in real life are literally like that. They dance with butterflies and pamper a special leaf on the tree. They make peacocks spread their tails. They talk with lions across mesh and observe the wind. They love homemaking—sewing, baking, cooking, cleaning, steaming clothes, etc.
Yes, they are exactly like how Disney portrays them to be.
When the movie Barbie came out in 2023, for the first time I learned that Barbie can make women feel insecure.
I mean, how is that even a thing.
Aren’t you supposed to nurture her? Have tea? Brush her hair? Dress her up? Buy her more dresses? Put her to bed? Why would any girl even think of body shape, beauty standards, and all these added agendas?
Hello? That’s not supposed to be in any child’s mind.
👨👧Second
They could be awkward in an environment full of women.
They are not natural in talking about feelings, and they often are quite insensitive (like guys) and have no idea that they hurt others’ feelings.
Yet secretly, they desire female companionship and female activities—tea parties, makeovers, sleepovers, baking and sewing, etc. They can certainly do these things with girlfriends, but female friendships never seem to be enough to fill the absence of a mother.
They often wonder how girls can gather twenty other girls to take a group selfie when they can’t even find the fourth bridesmaid.
👧🏽Third
The merit is innocence. The counterfeit—well, it’s just naiveness or rather, stupidity.
“The naive believes everything, but the sensible man considers his steps.”
Proverbs 14:15
On the contrary to man-haters, these girls are man-lovers due to wonderful experiences with their fathers.
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That could be their undoing.
Motherless girls can easily build friendships with men and are experts at maintaining boundaries.
BUT—and this is a big but—when it comes to men they develop a romantic interest in, they often trust them too easily. And if they keep this a secret from their fathers—very likely they do because their fathers don’t want to hear them talking about other men—they are putting themselves in danger. On the contrary, women who have mothers are actually more protected in this respect.
Look at how swiftly the Little Mermaid trusts the prince.
Now the good thing is—when motherless women become daughters of God, they are the type who have childlike faith.
🤦🏻♂️5 Problems to conquer—they are like dudes
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🛍️No.1 Pride and (true) entitlement
Men complain about how entitled women are these days—no, brothers, that’s just a facade of entitlement. You will know what true entitlement looks like when you meet a woman who has never been healed from her motherlessness.
Just look at Cher. She is so full of herself, though in an adorable way. But imagine—if she’s not as pretty and as rich, how long could you bear that girl? Can that girl be a wife, let alone a mother?
Fatherless girls crave male validation while motherless girls go to the other extreme: they are so pumped with validation from their fathers and sincerely feel they are better than everybody else. It’s cute when they are little girls but embarrassing when it’s time for them to woman up.
🎀No.2 Extended—if not forever—girlhood
Motherless girls are discouraged from growing up.
You heard me right. Their fathers, in a subtle way (and sometimes not so subtle), command them to stay in girlhood forever. They know they will lose their daughters to much younger men whom they can’t bear to look at and simply want to punch in the face. They keep their daughters from risks—even if the risk is necessary for growth.
Cher, acting like she’s been there done that, turns out to be a virgin. There's no better illustration of a motherless girl than this. She tries hard to appear sophisticated, when in fact, she is clueless.
All these 5 problems root in one thing: a masculine way of thinking.
🤼♂️No.3 Compete with men
Motherless girls face a unique problem in dating: she competes with the man she dates rather than against other women.
Motherless girls rarely feel jealous of other women. Quite the opposite, they are curious about other women and (almost ingratiatingly) desire female companionship. But they exude a triggering vibe that makes other women feel insecure around them. This desire remained unsatisfied until they’re healed.
They have a common habit of competing with men, especially those who grew up among brothers and male competitors due to their choice of majors and careers.
That is what happened to me. Growing up, boys were my intellectual competitors, and my father was my best friend. This caused me troubles in dating. I couldn’t bear to be left behind. If he has six-pack abs, I’m hitting the gym six days a week. If he’s good at communication, I must beat him in intelligence. If he is all about logic, then I’m more creative—this cycle could keep going.
Unfortunately, that’s the very opposite of biblical wifehood. A wife is to help, nurture, and submit to her husband, not compete with him. This habit of competing with men even once affected my faith—I dreaded that God would choose my husband over me.
🛠️No.4 Insensitivity
Everyone who knows me in real life must be laughing at this point.
"Oh, so you do know that.”
Motherless girls lack the diplomacy to communicate with sensitive and emotional people. Generally speaking, women tend to practice overthinking all day long, so motherless girls could have a hard time building female friendships.
Motherless girls are used to a direct and logical way of communication. They state facts, not feelings. If you tell them how you feel, they will try to give you a list of solutions. What can feelings do? Feelings are useless.
Sadly, insensitive women are harder to forgive than insensitive men because people expect women to be sensitive.
👸🏻No.5 Self-idolatry
This is different from No.1 pride and entitlement.
Like I mentioned earlier, self-idolatry is the counterfeit of self-nurturing, both stemming from the lack of female role models.
Because they didn’t know what it means to be a woman, and thanks to their fathers’ overflowing validations, they decided that they are the role models for every other woman.
Belle in Beauty and the Beast is the “prettiest and oddest” girl in town—now that statement deserves analysis. She’s certainly odd. But is she necessarily the prettiest? Could it be that she imagines this because she has no mother or girlfriends to compare herself with?
Cher is even more so. She puts herself on a pedestal. She has no older females around her to look up to.
Lastly,
I've noticed the rise of “femininity coaching,” which is basically red-pill for women. These femininity coaches teach women to put themselves on a pedestal to appear “high-value.”
Ironically, this pursuit in itself is masculine.
Likewise, red-pill gurus are often broken men, enslaved to lust yet hating women, forcing themselves to be 'stoic,' so they can avoid confronting their traumas.
“Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” Matthew 15:14
Neither of those will lead to healing.
Femininity is not sensuality. Masculinity is not stoicism. They can only come from intimacy with God.
Have you drunk the Kool-Aid of these red-pill💊 cults that target at orphan spirits?
Do you have an orphan spirit? Have you been misled? What mental strongholds have those blind guides built within you?
We’ll get on that next week.