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Here Are Some Women Who Make The 'Frozen' Princesses Look Pathetic. Will They Make The Big Screen?

Jason Porath spends his days researching women whose lives would be amazing movies (that won't ever get made). Historical and folklorical, their stories are fascinating. Let's hope there are some studio executives following his work and rethinking what makes a blockbuster.

Jason (who is apparently kind of camera-shy?) used to be an effects animator for DreamWorks Animation. "Rejected Princesses" grew out of a joke when he challenged his coworkers to come up with princesses who would be even more inappropriate as role models for little girls than Anna and Elsa, of "Frozen" fame. His inbox overflowed with a binder fulllist of awesome women.

Like this one, for example: Ching Shih took over her husband's shipping fleet upon his death and turned to piracy.

Not only that, but she became a leader of a huge fleet of pirates. You think pirates are famous for raping and pillaging? She laid down the law — anyone who raped a female captive would be beheaded! BOOM. (She was still down with pillaging.)

When she was done with piracy, she convinced the Chinese government to pay her a substantial amount of money and make her second husband a lieutenant in the navy. She retired in style, feared and respected by all.

To be fair, Ching Shih did have a crappy minor appearance in the third "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie. I think we can all agree that that doesn't begin to count.

How about this one: Lady Hester Stanhope, a British aristocrat, left behind a life of luxury (and social pressure to get hitched) to gallivant around the Middle East by herself, ignoring approximately 100% of what people thought she should do with her life.

She was a princess in the only way that matters, which is that people in the Middle East assumed she was. As Jason writes, "[S]he strictly adhered to the old Ghostbusterian adage: 'if someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes.'"


She went anywhere she damn well pleased, including the all-male monastery of Saint Anthony. After deciphering an Italian treasure map, she conducted the first modern archaeological dig in the Levant, unearthing an ancient city.

Would any one of her accomplishments not make one hell of a movie?

Some of the women Jason features were actual, literal princesses.

Take Khutulun, the Mongolian wrestling princess, for example.

Her dad wanted her to get married, but she wasn't feeling it. She offered to wrestle any man who'd like to be her main squeeze. If he won, he'd get to marry her. If he lost, he had to give her 100 horses.

She ended up unmarried, with 10,000 fine horses in her stables.

I could go on and on. I've learned so much from Jason's posts. Go check them out for yourself, and report back (tweet me @howletswing) with your favorite one.

EVEN BETTER NEWS (how does it get better, you ask?): There's a "Rejected Princesses" book coming out in 2016. I can hardly wait.

Pop Culture

Folks are admitting that Boomers weren’t totally wrong. Here are 19 things they got right.

OK, Boomer, you're right about this one.

via Patrick Lannigan/Flickr

The gaze of the approving Boomer.

Over the past few years, Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964) have been getting a lot of grief from the generations that came after them, Gen X (1965 to 1980), Millenials (1981 to 1996), and now, Gen Z (1997 to 2012). Their grievances include environmental destruction, wealth hoarding, political polarization, and being judgemental when they don’t understand how hard it is for younger people to make it in America these days.

Every Baby Boomer is different, so it's wrong to paint them all with a broad brush. But it’s undeniable that each generation shares common values, and some are bound to come into conflict.

However, life in 2023 isn’t without its annoyances. Many that came about after the technological revolution put a phone in everyone’s hands and brought a whole new host of problems. Add the younger generations' hands-on approach to child rearing and penchant for outrage, and a lot of moden life has become insufferanble.

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baby boomers
Pop Culture

Little boy steals the show at his sister's end-of-year dance school concert

This kid was born to dance.

@kleinkwagga1/TikTok

Klein Kwagga understood the assignment at his sister's concert.

Some kids are too shy to ever want to get on a stage, some will spend most of a performance staring awkwardly at their shoes, and some kids love the opportunity to show off what they've practiced in front of an audience.

And then there are the kids were simply born for the spotlight. You know them when you see them.

When Dirkco Jansen van Nieuwenhuizen hopped on stage with all of the other brothers and sisters of the dance students at René’s Art of Dance in South Africa, no one expected a viral sensation. According to Capetown Etc, it was the school's year-end concert, and siblings were invited to come up and dance to Bernice West’s Lyfie—a popular song in Afrikaans. And Dirkco, who goes by Klein Kwagga, took the assignment and ran with it.

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dance
Pop Culture

Weird viral photo of Adele's face exemplifies the phenomenon called the Thatcher effect

The 42-year-old optical illusion is still astounding people.

upload.wikimedia.org /Credit: Condé Nast (through Vogue Taiwan)

Prepare to get Thatcherized.

It seems that Adele is going viral once again.

Perhaps you’ve seen the image in question previously (it seems to make the rounds every couple of years). But in case you missed it—it’s Adele’s face. Normal, just upside down.

Only it’s not normal. In fact, when you turn Adele’s face right side up, what you notice is that her eyes and mouth were actually right-side up THE ENTIRE TIME, even though the entire head was upside down. So when you turn the head right side up, the eyes and mouth are now UPSIDE-DOWN—and you can’t unsee it. Do you feel like you're Alice in Wonderland yet?

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psychology
Community

People share the most practical ways to support new parents after giving birth

Sometimes the best gift is practicality.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

People share the most practical ways to support new parents

There's a lot of preparation that goes into having a child well before they're even born. First there are the physical changes your body makes to clear up some space for a tiny human roughly the size of a watermelon. Then there's preparing the nursery, buying lots of extremely small clothes, diapers and an expected understanding that while sleep may be your friend, you won't be getting any of it for about a year.

Lots of people give plenty of advice to help you cope in the early days but after the baby arrives, the focus shifts to solely the baby. It's obviously not a deliberate shift. Babies are just more shiny and new that the parents. But not everyone forgets about the parents once baby makes their grand entrance–some go out of their way to make sure the parents feel supported.

Upworthy asked its audience, "what was the best non-baby related gift you received as a new parent," and the answers were a masterclass on how to care for new parents.

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postpartum gifts
Family

A mom seeks doctor's help for postpartum depression and instead gets a visit from the cops

Too many women lose out on much needed support because of unwarranted stigma.

Canva

Postpartum depression is very common, and treatable.

Jessica Porten recently visited her doctor four months after giving birth to her daughter, Kira. She wasn't feeling quite like herself.

She had been dealing with overwhelming sadness and fits of anger, which she knew was likely stemming from a case of postpartum depression.

In a Facebook post, Porten recounts the story of that appointment.

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Identity

Formerly enslaved man's response to his 'master' wanting him back is a literary masterpiece

"I would rather stay here and starve — and die, if it come to that — than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters."

GOOD

A photo of Jordan Anderson.

In 1825, at the approximate age of 8, Jordan Anderson (sometimes spelled "Jordon") was sold into slavery and would live as a servant of the Anderson family for 39 years. In 1864, the Union Army camped out on the Anderson plantation and he and his wife, Amanda, were liberated. The couple eventually made it safely to Dayton, Ohio, where, in July 1865, Jordan received a letter from his former owner, Colonel P.H. Anderson. The letter kindly asked Jordan to return to work on the plantation because it had fallen into disarray during the war.

On Aug. 7, 1865, Jordan dictated his response through his new boss, Valentine Winters, and it was published in the Cincinnati Commercial. The letter, entitled "Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master," was not only hilarious, but it showed compassion, defiance, and dignity. That year, the letter would be republished in theNew York Daily Tribune and Lydia Marie Child's "The Freedman's Book."

The letter mentions a "Miss Mary" (Col. Anderson's Wife), "Martha" (Col. Anderson's daughter), Henry (most likely Col. Anderson's son), and George Carter (a local carpenter).

Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

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