When I was young, around five and six, I loved the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty. It was, and has been since then, my absolute favorite fairy tale. However, I never quite understood then (nor do I understand now) just why I like it so much. Really, all that happens is that Aurora meets a mysterious man in the woods, gets pricked by a needle, then kissed by previously mentioned mysterious man and they live happily ever after. I can’t expect something like that to happen to me. I mean, I expect the guy to buy me dinner first. Thinking back, I’m sure that the reason I loved that movie so much was because of Maleficent. She terrified and fascinated me as a child. I was a little thrown by the villain being a woman rather than a man (since up until that point my life had been Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Peter Pan), and Maleficent was just so blatantly evil. She never really had a reason to hate Aurora or the royal family, she just did. She owned up to who she was and she loved being herself.

Throughout my life, being myself has always been difficult. I have a lot of different versions of my personality for whoever I’m with. It’s rare for me to just be myself. Granted, the way I act around other people isn’t a completely different facade from my actual personality, but until recently, I never felt comfortable acting in whatever way came to me. At some point, I finally had an ah-ha moment and realized that, just like Maleficent, I didn’t need a reason to be the way I was, I could just be myself, and I really shouldn’t worry about who judged me. Did Maleficent worry about what Aurora or Prince Phillip or King Stephan thought about her? Of course not. She didn’t need to, because she knew that she was basically perfect the way she was and there was no use trying to hide it. Also she had the upper hand by being able to teleport places and create curses to put people to sleep, but that was just a happy coincidence.

Just before the start of my third grade year, my family moved from the plains of Des Moines, Iowa, to a tiny town in the mountains of Arizona called Lakeside. It was practically a different world, and starting school just a few weeks after we moved, I was absolutely terrified. My mother’s repeated advice was to be myself. Didn’t she understand that being myself was impossible? Frankly, I don’t think adults ever understand just how impossible it is for a person to be herself. Eventually, I started school and while I never completely opened up, I found people that had interests similar to mine. Even with my closest friends, most of whom I am still friends with today even though we left Lakeside three and a half years ago, I was still never able to really be myself.

At least, I was never able to be myself until my sophomore year of high school. I don’t know how, but some part of me just snapped and I started acting whatever way I wanted. Maybe it wasn’t a way that would please everybody, but at least I was being me, just me, rather than the version of myself that everyone else thought I should be. Like Maleficent, I simply threw expectations of other people out the window and acted however I wanted. Most of the time. There were times, and there still are times, when I just don’t feel comfortable being me. Sometimes I need to act slightly different to please a certain crowd, and honestly, that’s not a horrible thing.

Moving here to Cedar City was a slightly different scenario. I had just come out of the long dark tunnel of my parent’s divorce, and I was so ready for a fresh start. However, as I started eighth grade, I found myself twisting and bending my personality yet again to appeal to everyone around me rather than letting my personality go its own way. I remember watching Sleeping Beauty one time that year with my sister (because I hadn’t made many friends at that point) and wondering how Maleficent could just exist the way she did. Her character is just so interesting and complex, yet so simple. She’s just a powerful woman who doesn’t care what other people think of her.

Another thing I like about Maleficent’s character is that she doesn’t have much of a backstory. There’s no real reason for her to be the way she is, and nobody in the movie Sleeping Beauty asks ‘Why does she hate Aurora?’ or ‘What did the royal family ever do to her?’. The other characters just accepted that Maleficent owned her personality; she didn’t need a reason. This, in my opinion, is a principle that can be applied to everyday life, however loosely. My sudden “change in personality” sophomore year probably startled some people. Until then, I had never said a swear word out loud, or done something just for the heck of it. But the thing that made me realize that being myself was just fine was that my friends didn’t question why I was acting differently, they just accepted it, showing me that I didn’t need a reason to break out of my shell, they were just happy that I did.

Maleficent, Mistress of all Evil, doesn’t sound like a pleasant person. In fact, if I ever told my mother how much I admire this Disney villain, she’d probably get me immediate psychological help. However, Maleficent is truly one of the greatest people a girl my age can look up to because she doesn’t care what other people think of her, she just owns her evil self and acts in whatever way pleases her. She shows that being a villainess might not be the most popular or the sanest way to act, but there is still importance in owning up to the type of person you are rather than shutting your own self down and covering up your personality. Maleficent could have pretended to be a sweet, innocent woman, but she chose to be herself, without any apparent reason as well! She shows a trait that I admire and have sought out for years: having the ability to be yourself without the fear of people hating you for it.