Vital Viewing (Beauty is Only Skin, Ink, Pixels, and Lime-Colored Cosmetics Deep Edition)

Actress and singer Idina Menzel was born on this day in 1971. Obviously, though an attractive woman, she doesn't look anything like Queen Elsa of Arendelle. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, as standards of beauty in the real world are quite different than that of the world of animation. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not making some feminist argument that Disney cartoons create an impossible standard for real life females to live up to. Quite the opposite. I think real life creates an impossible standard for a Disney cartoon female to live up to! Think about it. In the real world that we all live in, a female with eyes as large as Elsa's in proportion to the rest of her face would not be asked out on a date but instead send a flesh-and-blood human, straight or gay, male or female, running and screaming in the opposite direction.

This is Idina as she looked in the 2007 Disney movie Enchanted. But she doesn't remain that way. It's all very complicated, but by the end of the film, she's a...

  ...cartoon. As you can see, her eyes have expanded in size, though they're still not as ridiculously large as Elsa's. It really doesn't work that way in Enchanted, but if she could retain the above look in a real world setting, it might be biologically plausible, though she'd save money on eye liner. 

Here from the same film is Susan Sarandon, cast by Disney (and, lately, in the minds of many Hillary Clinton supporters) as an evil queen:

 Again, from the same film, Susan Sarandon:

I'm not sure there's that much of a difference.

But then she's always kind of had cartoon eyes.

 Of course, there's Bette Davis.

But even her eyes were no match for a Looney Toons counterpart.

 Anyway, it's Idina's birthday, so let's get back to her. Whether she resembled Queen Elsa or not, she voiced her in Disney's 2013 computer animated flick Frozen. In the following interview, she tell us what that all involved:

In the following scene from Frozen, Idina sings her version of Foreigner's "Cold as Ice". No, no, just kidding. It's actually called "Let It Go" which may very well be what Lou Gramm is trying to convince...Well, let's not go there. Just watch and listen:

 Maybe it has nothing to do with the computer animation. Could it be that cold weather causes the face to shrink but the eyeballs to expand?

Prior to Frozen, Idina was perhaps best know for originating the role of Elphaba in the 2003 Broadway musical Wicked (and no, David Letterman wasn't in the cast, but it sure would have been cool if he was):

  Even with green skin, Idina makes a very fetching witch.

 Now, this woman, playing a 1939 version of supposedly the same character, is not fetching at all! But the situation is far from hopeless. If she can use her magical powers to conjure up a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, she might want to get a nose job, have that wart removed, and do something about that pointy chin. Afterwards, maybe see a dentist about the overbite, get the eyebrows plucked, put on some lipstick and eye shadow, ditch that dreary black ensemble and slip into something a little more flattering to the figure. Do all that, and she could end up looking just like an...

...Orion slave girl.

One drawback, though. There's more money to be made in casting evil spells.

There's money to be made in repeating yourself as long as what you're repeating strikes a chord with certain segments of the population. If you listen carefully to the lyrics of "Letting Go" and "Defying Gravity", you might notice that both songs express the same basic idea: the liberation one feels when  (according to the AP style book I'm allowed to use the following word in the singular sense) they finally defy orders and stop waging war on their own authentic self (something to keep in mind if you happen to watch a parade in the next few weeks.) Someone with a YouTube account certainly noticed the similarities and came up with this ingenious amalgamation:

Be she witch, cartoon character, or even flesh-and-blood human, Idina Menzel's own authentic self beautifully comes through loud and clear.