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If you grew up in the ’90s, you were probably raised on Disney movies. This was the age of what’s referred to as The Disney Renaissance, full of some of the best animated features Disney has yet made. Each of these stories has something in common — a love story, either to the side of the hero’s journey or front and center.
It’s a long-standing tradition in fairy tales to tell a love perfect, comfortably predictable love story. Princess meets prince, the forces of evil try to separate them, but in the end, their belief in love conquers all and they live happily ever after — never having another unhappy day in their life together.
Over time, these love stories have grown more complex, and so have the characters that we watch in children’s movies. No longer do the characters fall in love at first sight — instead, they take time to get to know each other. Frozen is famous for poking fun at this trope and for having Elsa be crowned queen of her country without a prince at her side.
I am not the first person to notice Elsa is queer coded. And I don’t think it’s subtle. In fact, I think that Elsa is a prime example of an aroace character, and Frozen 2 is about her learning to accept and love herself for who she is in a heteronormative world.
So let’s talk about it.
Oh, and spoilers for Frozen and Frozen 2, if you haven’t seen them.
What do “aromantic” and “asexual” mean?
First, some definitions, if you aren’t familiar. Aromantic refers to someone who does not experience romantic attraction. Asexual refers to someone who does not experience sexual attraction. Each of these identities are spectrum identities — meaning there are some people who rarely experience romantic attraction and some people who rarely experience sexual attraction, who may use these terms to describe themselves. Some other common terms you might see are gray ace, graysexual, demisexual, grayromantic, and demiromantic — these are people who may rarely experience sexual and/or romantic attraction, or experience it under select circumstances.
