Most everyone has seen Disney’s original Beauty and the Beast, the first animated movie to be nominated for Best Picture. Of the cast of characters in Beauty and the Beast, many of the animated greats come to mind: Beast, Mrs. Potts, Chip, Lumiere, Cogsworth, Gaston, and of course, the greatest Disney princess of all time without dispute, Princess Belle. There are three important characters though, that probably did not even come to mind. These characters are not even mentioned by name in the movie. In the musical version of Beauty and the Beast, the script lists them as “the silly girls.” You probably know who I am talking about—the three blonde triplets in Belle’s hometown who wear red, green, and yellow dresses.

These three ladies may make us chuckle in the opening song, but they never come to mind as one of our favorite characters. They are forgettable and silly—and not the fun, good kind of silly. They act foolish, seemingly unaware of any other purpose than fawning over the arrogant and ridiculous Gaston. They all look the same—the same stylish dresses in different colors and the same hair and makeup. They giggle and gossip. They swoon and faint. They put on a show, acting dumb and ditzy. They think Belle is crazy for thinking ill of Gaston or cracking open a book for pleasure.

Belle, on the other hand, is the opposite of a silly girl. She is kind, intelligent, sacrificial, caring, brave, independent, intuitive, ambitious, humble, and honorable. She is a visionary with aspirations beyond marrying the arrogant and rude Gaston. She sees through Gaston’s popularity with wisdom and discernment. She does not mind if she does not fit in with the silly girls. She takes care of her father when the town thinks he is a crazy old man. She bravely sacrifices herself for him at the Beast’s castle. She speaks truth firmly and gently to the Beast. She has sympathy and compassion on him when no one else does. All this, not to mention she is a unique beauty and wears a stunning yellow dress.

When presented with these two types of females, we should ask ourselves who we want to be. We are all going to have the same answer: we want to be Belles, not silly girls! The next important step then, is asking what the real difference is between them. At the risk of over-philosophizing a Disney princess movie, I think the real difference between these two types of women is one thing—ordered loves.

Ordered Loves

Saint Augustine defines virtue as having the correct hierarchy of loves. This could be imagined as a “ladder of loves,” with many rungs which rank the importance of the things we love. Augustine says that order determines if we love earthly beauties evilly or rightly. If we love temporal, created beauties second to the eternal beauties of God, then these loves are right and good and helpful. If they rank higher, they become evils in our lives:

And thus beauty, which is indeed God’s handiwork, but only a temporal, carnal, and lower kind of good, is not fitly loved in preference to God, the eternal, spiritual, and unchangeable good . . . For though it be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately. . . . But if the Creator is truly loved, that is, if He Himself is loved and not another thing in His stead, He cannot be evilly loved; for love itself is to be ordinately loved, because we do well to love that which, when we love it, makes us live well and virtuously. So that it seems to me that it is a brief but true definition of virtue to say, it is the order of love. (Augustine, City of God, XV.22, trans. Marcus Dods)

The ladder of loves is the underlying framework which determines how we think about ourselves, carry ourselves, and make decisions about all range of things: friendships, clothes, popularity, makeup, and social media. Virtue lies in how we rank the competing voices in our lives. What do our hearts desire most? Whose standards do we prioritize meeting? Whose affirmation could we not bear to lose? It is important to note that while Augustine directs Christians to keep the order of loves in check, he does not tell us to completely reject the physical world. This is not a lesson that Christians must completely reject things like fashion, makeup, name brands, or external beauty altogether. Instead, we need to ask ourselves if we place the things of God—integrity, dignity, honor, intelligence, purity—above or below the ever-changing standards of man. We must get our loves in proper order if we want to enjoy God and the world He created.

This is easy to say, but not to do. Just because we desire to be Belles does not mean we will wake up one morning and accomplish this without help and struggle. I could not recommend a wiser or more helpful story for mothers and daughters to read together than Louis May Alcott’s Little Women. Chapter nine, called “Meg’s Visit to Vanity Fair,” a title inspired by Pilgrim’s Progress, is a chapter about what it looks like to be a young girl struggling with ordered loves in the real world. Below is a summary of just chapter nine:

Meg March is from a poor family. She does not have many pretty dresses. She does not attend grand parties. She does not have a thousand suitors. She lives in a modest but beautiful home with her three sisters, her mother, and her father. All in all, she has a very happy life and is mostly content, but one season, she is invited to her wealthy and popular friend, Sallie Moffat’s, house for a grand party. When Meg’s peers see her getting ready in her plain “afternoon gown” while they are putting on their fancy “evening gowns,” they insist on using some of Sallie’s extra things to dress Meg up for the evening. After some initial resistance, Meg gives in and plays the part, even letting her silly friends call her “Daisy” for the evening rather than her real name. Alcott writes:

A lace handkerchief, a plumy fan, and a bouquet in a shoulder holder finished her off, and Miss Belle surveyed her with the satisfaction of a little girl with a newly dressed doll… ‘Come and show yourself,’ said Miss Belle, leading the way to the room where the others were waiting…As Meg went rustling after, with her long skirts trailing, her earrings tinkling, her curls waving, and her heart beating, she felt as if her fun had really begun at last, for the mirror had plainly told her that she was ‘a little beauty'.

 Meg’s friends tell her this: "You don't look a bit like yourself, but you are very nice.” Meg dances and flirts and has the attention of many that evening, but as the night progresses, what Meg believed was going to be the best evening of her life turns out to be something quite different. When a close family friend arrives at the party unexpectedly, he finds her unhappy and unrecognizable. He asks her if she is having a good time, and she answers, “’No, not just now. Don't think I'm horrid. I only wanted a little fun, but this sort doesn't pay, I find, and I'm getting tired of it’… Meg was too tired for gossip and went to bed, feeling as if she had been to a masquerade and hadn't enjoyed herself as much as she expected.” Vanity fair promises Meg everything—beauty, popularity, acceptance, attention, love, and friends—but it delivers little. Meg leaves vanity fair feeling lonely, tired, phony, unknown, generic, foolish, and silly. When she arrives home, she sits with her mother, Marmee, and confides in her: "I told you they dressed me up, but I didn't tell you that they powdered and squeezed and frizzled, and made me look like a fashion–plate…. I knew it was silly, but they flattered me and said I was a beauty, and quantities of nonsense, so I let them make a fool of me."

A Praise Worth Having

In response, Marmee says one of the wisest lines in the novel. She says, “Learn to know and value the praise which is worth having, and to excite the admiration of excellent people by being modest as well as pretty, Meg." What does Marmee not say? She does not say, “Meg, Christian women should not be pretty,” or, “If you had only used one strand of lace in your hair rather than two, I would not be concerned,” or, “Meg, you should never seek to be admired in any way.” Instead, Marmee is concerned with Meg’s heart and how her desires affect the way she carries and presents herself. It is a lesson in ordered loves and discernment. She instructs that there are people whose admiration is worth striving for, and people whose admiration is not worth stooping to grasp.

How to Instill Virtue

How can we be like Marmee and help our daughters become Belles rather than silly girls? I have three suggestions taken from my mother’s parenting of me.

1. Rid your daughters of the portals to vanity fair in their pockets.

Phones and social media teach us to, as C.S. Lewis says, “race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.” As Christian parents, we need to imagine where our daughters are going to be—as mothers, wives, employees, employers, and eventually old women. We need a long-term vision that doesn’t leave them stuck in immature youth as our culture teaches is ideal. What young girls are exposed to through celebrities, influencers, advertisements, and TikTok are false, unattainable standards that keep you coming back. At least Meg was dealing with the limitations of the real world—the internet can show you anything. Your daughters have a lifetime to have screens with internet access—don’t start it before they go to college. I speak to you as a young person who survived not having any personal devices until I could drive a car, and even then, I wish I had not had a smart phone until college. Holding off on giving me any form of personal technology was one of the greatest gifts my parents gave to me.

2. Tell your daughters when they are being silly girls.

It’s hard for all of us, especially when we’re young, to know when we are being silly girls. It is good for mothers to tell their daughter when they are acting like the silly girls. Deep conversations as well as some lighthearted teasing are good for our hearts and souls. One memory that always sticks with me is from fourth grade, when Crocs were all the rage as footwear. When I finally got some, I was so excited to wear them to school. There was one problem though. The holes in my “crocs” were triangles rather than circles because they were not real “Crocs.” As you may expect, a boy in my class made fun of me all day. When I went home that afternoon and told my mom about the whole situation, my mother’s response may shock you. She said, “Jane, you are going to wear those crocs to school every day because you are going to show that boy in your class that you don’t care what he thinks of your shoes.” I probably would have liked it better if my mom had run out to the store immediately to get me real Crocs, but what would this have taught me? It would have communicated to me that my mom cared about a 4^th grader’s opinion of me and that I should too. Instead, I was strengthened. I realized that the Belles of the world have bigger things cooking than conforming to 4^th grader’s ideas of “cool shoes.” I was being silly, my classmates were being silly, and my mother’s shocking response helped me to see it.

3. Be the Belle in their lives.

When I was little, my parents had a large painting in their bedroom of a beautiful woman in a large, dusty-blue dress sitting in profile. She had brown hair like my mom, and I remember one day looking at it and asking my mother if it was her. She immediately said, “Yes, of course it is.” As I got older, I eventually realized that the painting was in fact, not my mom. I asked her why she said that it was. My mother replied, “Because all little girls should think that is their mom.” I think this is true. I know now that the painting is not literally a picture of my mother, but in my mind, it is. Moms can preach to their daughters all day, but they must also be the vision. While you do not need to get a large painting of yourself for your room, you do need to create a vision for your daughter to strive for. So, read books, get off the phone, force your daughters to cook meals with you, speak truth firmly and kindly, carry yourself with dignity and grace, dress beautifully, and do not be controlled by the ebb and flow of popular culture. Be the better vision than the one culture offers.

Finally, through the help of God and His church, I pray we can cultivate little Belles instead of future silly girls and can join in Marmee’s vision for her daughters: “I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good. To be admired, loved, and respected. To have a happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives, with as little care and sorrow to try them as God sees fit to send.”

Join us for our upcoming Preschool Storytime on Tuesday, Feb. 10th at 10:30 to enjoy a winter themed story and craft. Feel free to bring a friend. Click below to RSVP today!