Y'all Come Sit a Spell

Who is your favorite cartoon character?

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My favorite cartoon character has always been Tinker Bell.

But I feel like I need to clarify something.

Not the nice one.

I mean the original Tinker Bell. The tiny blonde in the green dress from Peter Pan. The jealous one. The petty one. The one with the temper. The one who could communicate an entire profanity-laced paragraph with nothing more than a facial expression and the furious jingle of a bell.

That Tinker Bell.

My Tink had teeth.

Years ago, when Peter Pan came out on DVD, a partner and I sat down to watch it again. Somewhere along the way, they looked at me with genuine surprise.

“Tink isn’t nice.”

I grinned.

“No. No, she isn’t.”

Apparently, somewhere between childhood and adulthood, people remembered the wings. They remembered the green dress and the blonde bun. They remembered the pixie dust.

They remembered the sparkle.

But they had forgotten the teeth.

I hadn’t.

Original Tink was a girl with wings.

That was the magic of her.

We understood exactly what was happening when Wendy showed up. Here comes this girl, this interloper, waltzing into Neverland and suddenly occupying Peter’s attention.

Tink was jealous.

Of course she was.

We were jealous with her.

We wanted Wendy gone too.

Granted, most of us probably would have stopped somewhere before attempted murder.

Tink had commitment.

She was petty. Possessive. Impulsive. Selfish. Vindictive. She didn’t even want to share her pixie dust. Peter had to make her.

And she was also fiercely loyal, brave, loving and ultimately willing to sacrifice herself.

She was complicated.

She wasn’t a role model.

She was a character.

Then Disney discovered something else about Tinker Bell.

She was marketable.

Very, very marketable.

There were movies to make. Dolls to sell. Books and clothes and toys and an entire fairy universe waiting to be built around one of the most recognizable little blondes in the world.

I understand the business decision.

They made their money.

But somewhere along the way, they Stepford-wifed a fairy.

They kept the recognizable parts. The wings stayed. The green stayed. The blonde bun stayed. Certainly the sparkle stayed.

But those troublesome little personality defects?

Those needed some work.

The jealousy was softened. The temper became more manageable. The selfishness lost its bite. The dangerous little creature who could make spectacularly bad decisions because she was overwhelmed by an ugly emotion became considerably more agreeable.

And apparently, while they were working on her personality, somebody decided she needed a little plastic surgery too.

Exhibit A: original Tink.

Exhibit B: the newer version.

Your Honor, I have no further questions.

But what bothers me most isn’t that they changed her.

It’s that they squandered her.

Because original Tinker Bell already had everything a storyteller could possibly want for a series of stories about growth.

She had actual flaws.

Not adorable flaws manufactured so that a character can encounter a conveniently constructed crisis, learn the appropriate lesson and be better by the closing credits.

Tink had problems.

Tink was sometimes the problem.

What an extraordinary place to begin.

Let her jealousy cost her something.

Let her selfishness hurt somebody she loves.

Let her temper create consequences she can’t simply jingle her way out of.

Let her discover that loving someone doesn’t mean possessing them.

Let her learn to share her pixie dust and still be a little pissed about it.

Let her screw up. Let her apologize badly. Let her screw up again, but perhaps a little less spectacularly the next time.

Let her grow.

Let her mature.

Let her learn what to do with those teeth.

Instead, they sanded her down first and then manufactured crises for the polished version to navigate.

That’s the tragedy of it.

Tinker Bell didn’t need to become nicer before she could grow.

She needed the opportunity to grow because she wasn’t nice.

And I can’t help wondering what those meetings looked like.

Was there somebody sitting at that conference table defending her?

Did anybody say, “Wait. These aren’t defects in the product. These are the character”?

Did anybody argue that little girls didn’t need another perfectly agreeable heroine?

Did anyone suggest trusting Tink with her own future?

Because we had already trusted her once.

Children watched the original Peter Pan and understood her.

We didn’t need her jealousy explained away. We knew jealousy.

We didn’t need her anger softened. We knew anger.

We didn’t need somebody to assure us that underneath everything she was really sweet.

Sometimes she wasn’t.

So what?

Children have ugly emotions too.

Maybe there’s value in seeing a character feel something ugly without deciding that the character herself must therefore be ugly.

Maybe there’s value in watching someone make a terrible decision because of jealousy and then face what that decision caused.

Maybe little girls can handle a female character who isn’t always pleasant.

Maybe grown women can too.

We have an odd habit of celebrating women with strong personalities right up until those personalities become inconvenient.

We like spunky.

We like feisty.

We like independent.

But only while they’re charming.

Once those qualities acquire sharp edges, we start reaching for the sandpaper.

And perhaps that’s why I still feel protective of that original little fairy.

I don’t need to rehabilitate Tinker Bell.

I don’t need to explain away the jealousy, selfishness, temper or the occasional willingness to have Wendy knocked out of the sky.

Some of it was awful.

I know.

I was paying attention.

That’s my Tink.

The little girl with wings who loved enormously, hated enormously, made terrible decisions, redeemed herself, and never needed to be perfect for me to love her.

I don’t love Tinker Bell despite her teeth.

I love her with full respect for the teeth.

Disney kept the sparkle.

I just wish they’d trusted her enough to let her keep the rest of herself too.