Hans (Me): Can I say something crazy? Will you marry me?

Anna (Livvy): Can I say something even crazier? Yes!

Nailed it.

And then, as both of my daughters do whenever they hear this song, Livvy added, “But you should never marry someone you just met.”

“Right,” I said.

“That would really be crazy.”

“Indeed.”

“Because you should get to know them first.”

“Yep.”

“You and Mommy didn’t get married until you knew each other for years.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You need to be careful about who you marry.”

“Exactly.”

***

A couple days after Christmas, my wife and I took our daughters to see Frozen. It was their first time seeing a movie in the theater, and if you asked them now, they would probably tell you it was the greatest thing that has ever happened to them. We waited so long to take them to a movie because they’re pretty sensitive kids; by “pretty sensitive,” I mean they have been known to scream in fear during episodes of My Little Pony. But before taking them to see Frozen, I let them watch the trailers and YouTube videos for the movie, including the scariest parts—i.e., wolves and snow monsters. So they were prepared.

It was fitting that this should be their first real movie, since it’s essentially about a complicated relationship between two sisters—the elder of whom (Elsa) has the power to create ice and snow from thin air but is unable to control it. Elsa shuts her little sister out of her life for Anna’s (the non-superpower-having sister’s) own protection, and finally banishes herself to an ice castle on a mountaintop. But in doing so, she accidentally puts her kingdom into a deep freeze. With the help of an ice-monger, his reindeer, and an adorably clueless snowman, Anna must find and rescue her sister so that Elsa, who’s since become the Ice Queen, can thaw out their homeland. I thought my daughters would be able to relate to that; the complicated-relationship-between-sisters part, at least.

I did have a few reservations about going to the movie. One big reservation, anyway: Princesses. Why, why, why can’t Disney make a film with a female hero who is not a princess? I have simmered down since the princess panic I had last year about this time, but I still chafed at the idea that my kids’ first movie-theater movie would involve not just one but two princesses. And despite mostly positive reviews, there was some criticism of the fact that, in the process of adapting the story from the original Hans Christian Andersen tale, Disney had squandered almost every opportunity to depict a feminist heroine.

I had also read Gina Dalfonzo’s piece on The Atlantic. Spoiler alert: In Frozen, the charming prince Hans—who declares his love for Anna in Act Two—turns out to be a heartless bastard who mocks the seemingly moribund princess in Act Three, revealing that he only wanted to marry her so he could kill her older sister and usurp the throne. Dalfonzo argued that this sent a potentially devastating message to the target audience: “There is something uniquely horrifying about finding out that a person—even a fictional person—who’s won you over is, in fact, rotten to the core,” she wrote, and went on to say this twist could be “traumatizing” to six- or seven-year-olds who aren’t sophisticated enough for such a harsh dose of reality.