My parents moved to the Sunshine State right before I was born, a fact that I will always begrudge them and constantly live in denial of. I hate the sun, the humidity makes my naturally limp hair blow up in a bad way, I can’t swim, and even though I’ve been driving for three years, I still can’t pull into a parking spot straight. In fact, it’s quite difficult for me to think of anything I’ve enjoyed about this state – well, anything but Disney.

It didn’t occur to me before I started going to camp that other kids didn’t get go to Disney twice a year or find shelter in the rainbow-vomit-carpeted halls of the Contemporary when Mother Nature felt like wreaking havoc on their homes. Obviously, the best part about Disney was the Princesses. Each day at the park, I absolutely had to arrive in full costume – understandably this was prior to me learning the difference between being a JAP, as my Long Island parents bred me, and a real princess. After I started going to camp, a theater and arts camp, my Disney princess infatuation only grew. Each summer, Disney musical composer Alan Menken would visit us and conduct a sing-along. I will tell this fact to anyone who will listen, because I genuinely think it’s the coolest thing ever. These movies were my childhood, and these characters taught me the only lesson I would need in my eminent adulthood: somewhere in the range between ages 14 and 19, a handsome prince will show up and immediately solve all my problems. All I’d have to do was wait around to be saved, which wouldn’t be too boring since I, a modern princess, would have Netflix and stuff.

Wait, what?

While I will always be in love with Disney princess movies, now that I’m older, I see that most of these princesses were written in an age where a woman’s role was to wait, and do everything possible to be beautiful and conventionally desirable to attract her prince. This weekend, however, I finally got to see Frozen, and it reminded me of the inspiration I originally felt from Disney. Apart from the beautifully composed soundtrack and Broadway talent (Idina Menzel and Jonathan Groff voice some of the movie’s leads), Frozen seems to directly contrast with the Disney princesses of the past. The characters seem real and relatable, from Anna’s awkward first encounter with Hans to Kristoff’s cynical attitude towards Olaf’s summer dreams. When Anna informs Elsa of her engagement, the new queen rolls her eyes and proclaims she will not let her sister marry a man she just met – a thought that hadn’t even crossed one of the seven dwarf’s minds when marrying Snow White off in 1938. When Elsa inherits the throne of Arendelle, there’s no stipulation of marriage to legitimize her power or questioning of her capability to rule. And finally, the film ends with an act of true love between sisters, showing two royal women who didn’t need princes to save them. It’s the first princess movie that doesn’t revolve around a romance, and yet none of the Disney magic that I so loved was lost. I could see this movie a million more times – Frozen’s success (and recent Oscar nominations) just proves that our definition of a princess is changing, and Disney is changing with us, too.

As much as I love Disney, though, I’m still looking forward to moving up north in the future – the cold never bothered me, anyway.