Fairy tales--indeed all tales--are told for a purpose. They are a form of social education, a form that some scholars argue is older than civilization itself. They imagine dilemmas and offer a range of permissible solutions, labeling socially acceptable and unacceptable behavior, demarcating good and evil, exploring existential questions, binding the teller and the audience into a common understanding of community identity. Recent Disney movies spotlighting intelligent female characters who work hard and do not define themselves in terms of men illustrate a major change from the formulaic fairy tales portraying female inferiority and dependency. The source of interest in this article is what "Maleficent" tells its viewers about how girls and women are supposed to act and, further, what Disney's assumptions are about who would view this message and how they would receive it.