Snow White Is Not a Girlboss (She Never Needed to Be)
(And She Doesn’t Have to Be Turned into One, Disney!)
I grew up on Disney princesses.
As I said in the opening of my TEDx talk, Becoming a Warrior for Possibility, I never admired the princess who just had to lose a shoe or be kissed to wake up. Snow White and Cinderella were among them. I admired the fighters—the ones who did something, the women who wielded swords and knowledge —if not literally, then metaphorically.
Belle. Mulan. Elsa. Women with grit, edge, and fire who wanted "more than this provincial life."
I learned to admire the woman who fought. Because as women, we’ve had to.
We’ve had to fight for rights.
We’ve had to fight for respect.
We’ve had to fight for the right not to have to fight.
In some places, we still have to fight as women.
As good feminist girls, we’re taught to find our power in independence. In our fierceness. Rebel girls. Rage against the patriarchy, right?
Yet, somewhere in all that fighting, we lost reverence for the power of feminine softness.
The place where it’s safe to put down the sword and be served, nurtured, protected, cared for, and --dare I say--saved, like the original Snow White.
Our love of the heroine—the warrior woman—was born out of necessity. But what do we choose to give birth to when the fight ends?
Reclaiming the Power of Softness, Sovereignty, and Feminine Choice
Maybe it’s because I’m currently in the softness of my postpartum pod after having a daughter.
Maybe it’s because I now have a daughter.
Maybe it’s the compassion I’ve grown to have for the woman I’ve become—after losing five family members, moving twice, growing, naturally birthing, and raising three humans within the past four years.
I’ll even admit that maybe it’s because I’m outside of the city of Angles and now in Texas, where I meet women regularly whose sole aspiration is to be great wives and mothers. And why should they be shamed for that?
I see Snow White differently now. And while she's still not my favorite princess (Belle will always hold that title), I respect her as a character in the original film.
I didn’t need her to grab a sword and start a rebellion to keep me from questioning my worth as a woman. Empowerment doesn’t need a battle scene. Sometimes, a good nap, a song, and a frolic with a loyal prince will do just fine.
There was a sweetness, a softness, an innocence in her that’s been unfairly dismissed—hardened by a culture that tells women they must be fierce to be worthy.
Snow White was not a girlboss.
She wasn’t a disruptor trying to take down a tyrant.
She didn’t rally armies (even if the new Disney movie has her as a revolutionary)
And while she did a remarkable amount of cleaning, she didn’t have to “do it all" while running a kingdom.
She didn’t need to fight to prove her worth.
Her softness was her strength.
Yet, in its live-action remake of Snow White, Disney has made it a character flaw.
Sure, she still sings. But she lost the quiet rebellion of kindness compared to the power-hungry, validation-seeking Evil Queen.
The Sovereign Woman Chooses Her Path
What makes a woman powerful isn’t how hard she pushes. It’s how freely she chooses.
The sovereign woman doesn’t need to prove herself with pressure.
It’s not that she can’t fight.
She decides which battles are worth fighting--and not all battles are worth your precious energy.
The sovereign woman acts with discernment rather than distraction by everything the world tells her she “should” want, have, do, be, or even care about.
She knows her worth isn’t dependent upon her output.
She doesn’t need to climb the ladder to be seen or successful.
True feminine power is in the freedom to choose:
- To work or stay home.
- To lead or lean back.
- To build a business or raise a family—or both.
- To choose partnership not out of weakness, but from sovereignty.
There is nothing wrong with wanting a prince.
There is also nothing wrong with wanting a beast to rip your clothes off and ravage you. (Just saying, ladies.)
There is nothing wrong with desiring a protector.
There is nothing wrong with softness and letting your partner know you want him to pick up the slack.
What’s wrong is a society that shames women for their wishes—whatever their dreams may be, whether they wish to have their prince someday come or build a billion-dollar empire.
Let’s Stop Shaming Women for Choosing to Let Someone Else Be the Hero
Snow White still has main character energy — hello, the entire movie is about her.
It’s not called The Prince and the Seven Dwarves.
It’s her story.
She’s the reason the plot moves forward.
She’s the one who transforms every space she enters — even the messy cottage of seven grown men becomes a sanctuary of warmth and order because of her nurturing presence.
But she doesn’t have to slay the dragon.
She doesn’t have to go to battle.
She doesn’t have to be the one wielding the sword.
She lets herself be saved. And that is not weakness.
That is her power to choose.
That is power.
We’ve been taught that if a woman isn’t fighting for herself, she’s failing herself.
That if she’s not the hero of every scene, she’s irrelevant.
But sometimes, the most sovereign thing a woman can do is delegate the fight.
To say, “I’ve done my part. Now I’ll rest and receive.”
To let her man rise to the challenge and be her champion.
To trust that she doesn’t lose her power by letting someone else protect her—instead, she multiplies it.
That’s not giving up the spotlight.
That’s knowing she is the spotlight—and she deserves to be protected.
Women who know what they deserve are dangerous.
Not because she threatens others.
But because she threatens the system that fed off her forgetting.
Because she’ll no longer build someone else's empire at her own expense.
Because she’ll no longer exhaust herself for external validation.
And that terrifies the current societal construct.
We’ve built a world on the backs of women who were taught to forget themselves, their desires, their dreams, and, yes, even their wishes.
Women included—we’ve been sold the plagiarized programming that some wishes are "empowered" (like starting a company or leading revolutions against tyrants), while others—like wanting to be protected or, God forbid, saved by a prince—get tossed in the “anti-feminist” bin.
If I’m unconscious in a glass box and the cure is Love’s kiss, I’m not lying there like, “No thanks, I’m an independent woman. I'll find a way out myself.” Heck no!
Save me, baby! Give me the damn kiss. I’ve got kingdoms to run.
A great leader empowers others to lead; a sovereign woman empowers others to rise on her behalf.
Not because she can’t fight but because she knows she doesn’t always have to.
Snow White was not a side character in her own story just because in the original she got saved by a prince.
She was the sun every character orbited around—even the Evil Queen, who obsesses like a Mean Girl about taking her down, thereby forgoing her own sovereignty and power.
True power isn't a projection of insecurity.
Snow White's value didn’t come from force but kindness.
From trust.
From softness.
From the courage to receive.
And that is a lesson the “girlboss” era forgot:
You don’t have to be the hero to be the heart of the story.
Being the hero is often just the ego in disguise—trying to prove its worth by rescuing everyone, fixing everything, doing it all.
But here’s the plot twist:
When you’re stuck in “hero mode,” you’re also stuck in the drama triangle—playing tag with the victim and the villain.
You save someone → they resent you → you feel unappreciated → they feel disempowered → rinse, repeat.
The hero is just as trapped as the damsel.
Because the hero needs someone to save so that they can feel worthy.
It’s performance. It’s pressure. It’s exhausting.
It keeps you externally validated and internally depleted.
That's why the Mirror-mirror validation-seeking Evil Queen hates Snow White in the first place.
Because the heart of the Disney original Snow White story is that she doesn’t need to prove her power.
When enough women know that in their bones--
The world will rise to meet them.
In the same way, a great leader empowers others to lead; a sovereign woman empowers others to rise on her behalf.
Not because she can’t fight but because she knows she doesn’t always have to.
And…Yes, you Can Be a Warrior Too
Let me be clear: I don’t believe being a Warrior for Possibility is wrong.
There are seasons in life when you must fight for your family, vision, rights, and healing.
Even in labor, when you give birth to a child, there is a time when you must push.
I’ve fought.
I’ve led.
I’ve pushed businesses, books, and babies out of my body and my brain.
I know what it means to strive. To labor. To fight for the vision.
But here’s what birth teaches us—what the feminine has always known:
The push isn’t constant.
Real labor—the kind that brings forth life—comes in waves.
Each contraction lasts about 90 seconds.
But it’s preceded by 5–7 minutes of rest. Of stillness. Of gathering. Of softening between the surges.
Because the body knows:
Without rest, you can’t birth.
Without surrender, there is no strength.
We weren’t made to push endlessly.
Women were made to pulse—like the womb, the tide, and life itself.
To come home to your softness is not weakness. It is Sacred design.
If We Don’t Learn When to Lay Down the Sword, We Become What We Fought Against
We risk being swallowed whole by the same paradigm that wounded us.
We become soldiers in a system that glorifies fighting to the death (i.e., burnout).
We become slaves to the system that rewards only productivity and pushing farther! Faster! Harder! Do MORE! BE MORE!
We become consumed by the construct of rewarding reason and logic and mistrusting our own emotions and intuition.
For in constantly fighting, we fear the unknown flow of the feminine.
You may think you're breaking the chains of constructs and conditioning.
But if you keep operating from the same masculine warring energy—always pushing, striving, proving, revolting, rebelling, and battling—you’re not dismantling the war machine,
You're fueling it.
And what starves in the process?
The feminine.
The flow.
The nourishment.
The receiving.
The inner temple.
Somewhere in all the fighting for women's choice, we lost reverence for the power to choose softness.
Softness is not passivity.
It’s not a weakness.
It’s the place where creation begins.
It’s the fertile void, like soil, for seeds of creation to be planted.
If we don’t remember this—if we don’t honor the rhythm between strength and surrender—we’ll remain trapped in a war against the world.
Against men.
Against each other and our witch-wound.
And ultimately, against ourselves.
The feminine is not here to mimic the masculine.
She’s here to balance it.
Yin to the yang.
The sovereign woman has the discernment to know when to fight and the wisdom to tune into when she needs to rest.
When a woman forgets her softness, she doesn’t become more powerful—she becomes burnt out.
And a burnt-out, exhausted woman is not free.
She’s just armored with resentment.
So, let’s choose sovereignty over survival.
Because the sacred feminine is not either/or.
She is “And.”
A Call to Arms (And an Invitation to Soften:
So here’s your invitation, warrior woman:
Before you pick up the sword again—ask yourself:
Is this fight still mine to fight? Or have I just grown used to swinging?
Power is knowing when to rise.
Wisdom is knowing when to rest.
And sovereignty is choosing both with intention.
Let this be your awakening—not to fight harder, but to feel deeper.
To remember the power of your feminine.
To reclaim the sacred rhythm of your rise and your rest.
To choose softness without apology.
Because the OG Snow White may not have been a girlboss—but she was still the queen of her story.
And so are you.
And that's real power.
Kimberly Spencer is an award-winning high-performance, trauma-informed coach, TEDx speaker, the founder of Crown Yourself® and CEO of Communication Queens, and #1 bestselling author of “Make Every Podcast Want You: How to Become So Radically Interesting You’ll Barely Keep from Interviewing Yourself" which was named one of the "Top Books of 2024 to Change Your Life" by Foureva Media in NYC's Times Square.
With 2X award-nominated top podcasts for her businesses, Crown Yourself® and Communication Queen, Kimberly is elevating the conversation for visionary leaders to get their voices heard, leveraging strategy + spirituality.
A warrior for humankind's infinite possibility and an unsinkable optimist, this mom of three is on a quest to revolutionize mindsets from fear to faith so that you can stand in your power.
Her work has been featured on Netflix, The CW, ESPN, Chicken Soup for the Soul, NPR, Thrive Global, CNBC, and Forbes.