My daughter and I are currently in a production of the show Beauty and the Beast at LifeHouse, a local community theater. The heroine of our version is named Rose, not Belle; otherwise the story tracks pretty well with the story you know.
An open letter to my daughter…
Daughter of My Heart,
Since we started this show together, I have noticed a lot of flak out in Cyberland against the Beauty and the Beast story. Most of it centers on the idea that Rose (Belle, Beauty, whatever you wanna call her) is a bad role model for young women, because she falls in love with the Beast (sort of the epitome of the “Bad Boy”) in the hopes of changing him. In the Christian world, we call that missionary dating; in the secular world, it’s just stupid and codependent. (more…)