Armor.
That’s what she had to put on, every day.
Amidst cat calls, pranks, and those who watched and waited for her to fail so they could pounce, Grace Huntington walked a daily minefield with invisible protective gear making her not as invisible as she wished she could be.
Walt had warned her about this in her job interview for the story department at Walt Disney Studios. He was honest with Grace, stating, “It’s difficult for women to fit in this work. The men will resent you. They swear a lot. That is their relaxation. They have to relax in order to produce good gags and you can’t interfere with that relaxation. If you are easily shocked or hurt, it’s just going to be too bad.”
He also shared that he didn’t like to hire women in the story department, because “it takes years to train a good man. Then if the story man turns out to be a story girl, the chances are ten to one that she will marry and leave the studio high and dry, with all the money that had been spent on her training gone to waste and there will be nothing to show for it.”
Antiquated as that reasoning might be to us now, that was the way the world was in the 1930s. Women didn’t make careers, they made homes. That was what was expected of them.
Concept artwork on display at the Walt Disney Family Museum.
So when Grace showed up at the entrance to the room of her first story meeting, she was barred entry. The male security guard basically told her she was in the wrong place, that no women were permitted and that she must be mistaken as to her desired location, indicating the ink and paint annex across the way. That was where the women worked, tracing lines and coloring in the men’s drawings. She insisted she needed to be in the meeting and blew past him, striding by men who threw whistles and suggestive remarks her way. Finding her way to the middle of a row of seats, she waited for her only other female compatriot Bianca Majolie to join her.
She never came.
Bianca, in fact, rarely came to those meetings, mainly because she believed they were a waste of her time, and so she found excuses to be elsewhere.
Grace watched warily as 75 men flowed into the room, many tossing her a side eye or crass remark until slowly every seat was filled.
Every seat but the two on either side of Grace.
It’s hard to say when Grace put on her armor, but I can imagine it could have been after being so publicly humiliated and degraded that day. It certainly had to be an experience that made her turn inwards and seep protection from that which she couldn’t control.
Grace had to smile and laugh it off on the outside, however. When her colleagues put a live pig under her desk for fun, she wasn’t allowed to have any emotion but humor about it. When the men around her chose to see her curves instead of her creativity, she had to accept their dismissiveness. When she walked in every day knowing she would be paid significantly less than her male counterparts that did the same work she did, some with even less skill or experience.
Through it all, Grace found solace in her armor, where it was safe.
Sketch from Berkely Brandt, included in “The Queens of Animation” by Natalia Holt
We do that, too. Put on our armor. Build our walls. Pretend everything is ok when inside we are curled up in the fetal position hoping to not get one more kick to the ribs from the outside world.
I think, over time, the more words people throw at us that chip away at our well-being and confidence, the bigger the walls we erect around our hearts. We start to justify them, explaining to our tired, bruised being that they are necessary, the only way to step through life safely after too many bumps and bruises.
Ironically, we don’t always know we are wearing the armor we’ve subconsciously put on. We just quietly put on piece after piece after each painful encounter with those who have harmed us.
The question is, does the armor really protect us? And while it might protect us, what if it is also hindering our freedom to experience the world unencumbered?
I sometimes wonder what creations the world never got to see out of Grace and her female animator counterparts simply because they were afraid of being ridiculed, belittled, or shamed for their unique perspectives. Sure, they still contributed greatly to the story and animation departments at Walt Disney Studios, influencing many projects that would have been drastically different without them. But what of the ideas they were too timid to share? What if they were too afraid of the reactions of those who didn’t fully understand them (and didn’t care to try)? And what if untold amounts of brilliance were left on the cutting room floor of their minds simply because their armor wouldn’t allow it beyond the safety of their interior?
Today marks the day that I publish my very first book, one that I’ve labored over and wrestled with for more than a year. Along the way, I’ve also been posting on social media, which, as any digital creator will attest to, is its own unique blend of joy, fun, frustration, and heartache. On the positive side, I’ve met the most loving, accepting, and supportive group of Disney humans that a girl could ever ask for. But in the darker reality of online life, I’ve had words flung at me to defame my character, my purpose, my artistic choices, and my mental capacity. I also unexpectedly found myself betrayed, belittled, gaslit, and forgotten by people I knew in real life who I believed loved me more than they actually did.
Some of these events made me want to superglue my armor to my body, never letting anyone close to me ever again. And some of the words that embedded their way into my skin I desperately tried to scrub away, knowing they weren’t the truth. But, blessedly, some of the most gracious people have circled around me on the hardest days, simply sitting with me while I wrestled with the choice of what to do with my chain mail, and whether or not to don the heavy helmet in my hands.
I worry, though. I worry that putting my words out into the world will create a chink in the armor, a vulnerability where people could push me down to a place where I won’t rise up again. I worry that what I say and how I say it will be unfavorable, that people will think I am something that I’m not, or trying to be something I never intended to be. I worry that no one will want to sit in the seats next to me anymore if I push forward as a woman creator in a long-since male-dominated field.
But then I think about Grace. Her name says it all, really. She moved with grace through that meeting room full of men, albeit with invisible armor. She granted her colleagues grace, and possibly a measure of forgiveness, even though they didn’t deserve it. And she chose to continue to grace those around her with her presence and talents, deciding that pursuing her purpose was more important than any of her doubts and misgivings.
I want to be like Grace. Moving forward adorned with armor when necessary, but also being aware of how it limits my movement, and even removing it when it’s safe to do so.
Because sometimes it is safe to do so.
But you get to decide who gets you armor-free and who hasn’t yet earned that right.
And you also get to choose whether or not to listen to the voices that seek to keep you from getting to where you know you need to be.
If a voice, either externally or internally, threatens your way forward, take a page from Grace’s book and simply say, “I’m going in now. The meeting is starting and I need to be part of it.”
Thank you, as always, for choosing to come along with me on this journey as we explore why we love Disney, and how the Disney story is reflected in our own lives. My book A Glimpse of the Magic: Finding Ourselves in the Disney Story is on sale now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Google Play, and Kobo! I hope that it helps you catch a glimpse of the magic in every day as you see yourself in the Disney narrative you know and love.
When I’m not creating books and posts, I catch some of my obscure Disney history and thoughts here on the Disney Cicerone blog. If you’d like to be the first to know about new posts, sign up below!
