Just to mention, early drafts had her just passing her 17th birthday at the start of the movie. By the time production came around, there were no references to her age, and both the voice actor and animator have said they based off early 20s. In part because of her clear emotional intelligence, which isnt really teen level.
I’d say the lowest she could be considered at the start of the film would be 17, but I’d agree on early 20s personally.
My sister is younger than me by a decent margin and was prime age for the late 80s/early 90s world of Disney. I watched a lot of Disney with her.
Also, the definition of legal adulthood is fundamentally arbitrary. That’s an uncomfortable truth that people don’t like to have pointed out, but the only thing that makes “18 years and a day” in any substantial way different than “18 years minus a day” is that the laws in most places (not even all, to be honest) define midnight on one’s 18th birthday as the moment one becomes a legal adult.
It could just as easily be 21 or 25 or 19 or 20 or 17, and in some cases it is treated as one of those or another. But local laws are ultimately what make that determination, and those laws are written by humans. And the social consciousness has kind of just settled on 18 as the standard.
But even then, people don’t stick to it, because most people are still uncomfortable with the idea of a 28 year old dating an 18 or 19 year old. So why don’t we make the legal age of adulthood something higher, that everyone would be comfortable with acknowledging and granting full autonomy and rights to a person of that age?
The point is, that in previous centuries and in other cultures around the world, 18 was/is not the standard age of adulthood. And there’s no objective reason why it should be.
So even if a character in a pre-industrial fictional world happens to be 17, nothing about that suggests that she isn’t an adult.
I’m sure people will be outraged about me saying this and come up with all sorts of strawman arguments to deflect the truth so they don’t have to face it, but if so then that completely misses the point of what I’m saying in the first place.
Just to mention, early drafts had her just passing her 17th birthday at the start of the movie. By the time production came around, there were no references to her age, and both the voice actor and animator have said they based off early 20s. In part because of her clear emotional intelligence, which isnt really teen level.
I’d say the lowest she could be considered at the start of the film would be 17, but I’d agree on early 20s personally.
My sister is younger than me by a decent margin and was prime age for the late 80s/early 90s world of Disney. I watched a lot of Disney with her.
Source for the early drafts thing?
Also, the definition of legal adulthood is fundamentally arbitrary. That’s an uncomfortable truth that people don’t like to have pointed out, but the only thing that makes “18 years and a day” in any substantial way different than “18 years minus a day” is that the laws in most places (not even all, to be honest) define midnight on one’s 18th birthday as the moment one becomes a legal adult.
It could just as easily be 21 or 25 or 19 or 20 or 17, and in some cases it is treated as one of those or another. But local laws are ultimately what make that determination, and those laws are written by humans. And the social consciousness has kind of just settled on 18 as the standard.
But even then, people don’t stick to it, because most people are still uncomfortable with the idea of a 28 year old dating an 18 or 19 year old. So why don’t we make the legal age of adulthood something higher, that everyone would be comfortable with acknowledging and granting full autonomy and rights to a person of that age?
The point is, that in previous centuries and in other cultures around the world, 18 was/is not the standard age of adulthood. And there’s no objective reason why it should be.
So even if a character in a pre-industrial fictional world happens to be 17, nothing about that suggests that she isn’t an adult.
I’m sure people will be outraged about me saying this and come up with all sorts of strawman arguments to deflect the truth so they don’t have to face it, but if so then that completely misses the point of what I’m saying in the first place.