Since the first movie of Shrek, Fiona was presented as a fierce personality, which was the first step in her journey of raising little girls to turn into powerful, skilled women. Being the first princess of DreamWorks Studios, Fiona was a wave of fresh air in the middle of the previous Disney princesses.
The message was clear: she was capable of defending herself using her words just as well as her body and mind, even when she was seen as flimsy. She showed the last generation of girls who accompanied her story up close, and is showing for the present one that being a princess is more than waiting for a happy ending to find you. She chased it by herself.
She’s more than a princess
In the sequence of films, Fiona discovers traces of herself and experiments with a lot of roles. She was a princess waiting to be saved from her tower. She can sing to animals; however, we quickly discover that she has a sharp tongue, knows how to fight, and could easily escape from the tower alone if she wanted to. In Shrek the Third, she was a mother, a friend, and a ruler. In Shrek: The Final Chapter, she was a warrior, commanding an army of ogres.
But below all of that, she was only a girl; she learned to embrace her insecurities, learned how to save herself, and take risks. Fiona is not only a princess who was made for little girls; she was made for women in general, for the ones who are lost and need to find a path, and also for the ones who already have their minds made up and need a figure to identify with. She’s not only a princess, she’s one of us.
She’s afraid of what people would think of her when they saw her in her ogre form, but she learn how to love and accept herself and chose to stay in that form forever. Her life is filled with ups and downs, but she knows how to deal with any of the bad situations that come her way. She communicates that we can be everything all at once, that we are allowed to be complicated and full of emotions, and that doesn’t make us weak.
We can have kindness and be delicate, such as a princess; we can be fragile and need help when things get tough; we can be sensitive and emotional, and demonstrate our happiness, sadness, and anger. We don’t have to be perfect; we can be messy and complex. Again, in Shrek the Third we can see not only Fiona but a lot of other princesses from traditional stories fighting for their longings, they do good and bad things, support one another, each one of them with their own personalities and wishes. In the end, we’re all women who are growing older, searching for our own so-called “happy ever after”.
But what about a happy ending?
Fiona teaches that we don’t have to settle for only one idea of “happy ending”, she changes her mind several times during the movies until she finally can find one that can truly get her to feel satisfied. She tries to fit into the fairytales, tries to be the perfect princess who’s blessed by a fairy godmother and marries an equally perfect prince. But the fit can be suffocating, so she leaves to forge her own path.
She was always the ruler of her destiny, never letting herself be smashed by the expectations pressed upon her, even in the hardest times. She attempts loneliness and also the companionship of the most unconventional people. She embraces the changes that appear in her life without warning, but sometimes she’s the one who’s purposely transforming things.
She redesigns the concept of “what really is a happy ending?”. She’s for the girls whose happy endings are alone and enjoy their solitude, but would still like to receive love and care, like in Shrek. She’s for those who want to build a family, to enjoy life with the proximity of friends, and be a safe place for the ones they cherish, like in Shrek the Third. And for those who simply want to enjoy a quiet life without being disturbed, especially if that includes the possibility of pampering her cats, like in Shrek: The Final Chapter.
And in the epilogue of her story, we learn alongside her that “the end” is never truly the end; the tale keeps going even after the book closes. Life comes with a bunch of “what ifs”, and just like Fiona, we can edit our text and place a comma or a period wherever we want to. Being Fiona and being a woman is an eternal “to be continued” in our search for happiness.
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The article above was edited by Clarissa Palácio.
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