Posts tagged Disney
Feminist Media
Taking Back the Media
I swear to god if I read one more post saying “Merida didn’t care about fancy dresses and what not” I will scream. Neither did any of the other princesses. Sure, Cinderella wanted to go to the ball but she didn’t even make either dress she wore. Her mice friends made the first dress, which was an updated version of her mothers dress, and the second one her fairy godmother gave her. She spends seconds admiring the dress in the movie. I’d hardly count that as her only caring about her looks and fancy dresses. Then there was Aurora who admired her birthday present from the fairies. Lets be serious, none of the princesses gave 2 fucks about their looks. They had other things to worry about like finding out they were princesses, surviving abusive homes, figuring out how to save a loved one, and figuring out how to turn the idiot frog back into a prince.
The princess merchandise sold does NOT fit the personality of any of the princesses. None of the princesses were in their ball gowns for the majority of the movies. They are not marketed in the dresses they wore throughout the majority of their movies. I’m sorry but Belle is much happier/comfortable locked in a library with her books than dancing around a ball room. Ariel is much happier exploring than dancing in a gown not even found in her movie. Cinderella only wore the blue dress for maybe 5 minutes in the movie. Her work dress is what she wore for the majority of the movie. She is frankly more comfortable in “average” clothes. Aurora was happiest singing and dancing in the forest with Phillip, not dressed in her ball gown. Tiana is more comfortable cooking and running her restaurant not dressed in some ball gown. You know how big of a pain in the ass that dress would be in the kitchen? The only princesses whose outfits weren’t radically altered were Snow White and Rapunzel. If Pocahontas didn’t look like she went shopping at Forever 21, I’d add her to the list. The princess line up does nothing to market the characters from the movies. None of the princesses in that line up are how they are in the movies.
If you are going to focus on Mulan and Merida, you better focus on all the princesses. It is ridiculous that people don’t mention that none of the princesses would be comfortable in the roles Disney gives them in the princess line up. Disney strips all of the princesses of their personalities and makes them all the same. That is a fucking problem. That is not just a problem for 2 of the princesses, it is a problem for all 11 of them.
Dear Disney fans,
Critiquing a Disney movie does not mean we hate Disney, think Walt Disney is the devil, or have some stick up our ass. Most people who critique Disney do enjoy the films and do actually like Disney. We are also about to think critically about the media we consume. Disney was no saint. He heavily relied on stereotypes in his films. Haven’t you notice all his female heroines, animals or people, are kind, caring, and compassionate? That is the stereotypical representation of what a woman should be in the early 20th century. Snow, Cinderella, and Aurora are also all seen cleaning in their films, i.e. they are domestic. Two of them were also being abused with was a fucking plot point in their movies. Disney heavily relied on the evil step mother trope in both Cinderella and Snow White. Disney relies on racist stereotypes in Dumbo (the crows), Lady and the Tramp (the cats and Chihuahua), and Peter Pan (the Native Americans) to name a few. Does that mean these movies are inherently bad and evil? No. However, people do start to believe the stereotypes in these movies because they are reenforced by our culture at large. Disney is a huge cultural force in the 20th and 21st centuries. There is no denying that. Disney movies, while entertainment, do shape how people view society. For that reason it is incredibly important to critique Disney. That doesn’t mean we want to kill your childhood or hate on Walt Disney for shits and giggles.
Love,
A very annoyed feminist and Disney fan.
(Source: lipsredasroses)
Since it is National Coming Out Day (I’m queer fyi), I decided to have fun with my favorite Disney princesses. I think Belle and Ariel would make the perfect couple so I drew them together. I will probably draw the other princesses as well but these two are my favorites.
I drew Ariel in her park dress because I frankly hate the pink one in the movie.
(Source: lipsredasroses)
“Sing Me a Story.” Does anyone remember this from when they were a kid? I was in love with it. I wish Disney still did things like this. They had a whole series around Belle loving stories. Now you can buy Belle makeup and nothing to do with her love of reading.
(Source: lipsredasroses)
I really hate how Disney promotes Brave.
I decided to rewatch Brave and it made me think about how the film is promoted/merchandised. I have a lot of Brave merchandise, including a lot of the pins they’ve made, but I’ve noticed is Disney sells mostly Merida merchandise. Which is fine, I love Merida. She is one of my favorite Disney characters and favorite Pixar character. However, I noticed Elinor is not in most of the products Disney sells and not a main part of the promotion. The movie is about Merida and Elinor, not just Merida, Merida and her brothers, nor Merida and Angus. It has always bothered me that there is no Elinor pin. There is a pin of Fergus but not Elinor. There is one pin of Merida and a bear, who is probably Elinor. However the majority of the pins are either Merida by herself or Merida and the triplet bears. Minus the pins being incredibly repetitive, they don’t represent the point of the movie. I am guessing with Mothers day we will probably get a Merida/Elinor pin but who knows. My favorite thing about the movie is the fact it is about Merida and Elinor. It’s about two women who misunderstand each other but learn to understand each other throughout the movie. Its a story a lot of women can relate to. The number one thing I’ve heard from fans of the movie is they could see themselves in Merida and related to her relationship with her mom. I get the whole point of the merchandise/promotion is to sell the movie but can’t they do that with Elinor? I know Brave fans like myself would buy Elinor merchandise.
(Source: lipsredasroses)
“Brave”
So after reading Richard Lawson’s piece on Brave, it was clear to me he missed the point of Brave. Which doesn’t really surprise me. I only have one male friend who has seen Brave and he liked it. He doesn’t get why I adore this movie and love it to pieces. He doesn’t really get why this movie is so powerful. Many of my female friends have seen it and they all have similar reactions to it. They’ve all liked it or loved it but every single woman has told me they connected to Merida and Elinor’s relationship. Every single one told me they could relate to the mother/daughter relationship in the movie. One of the most powerful scenes in the movie to me was when Elinor destroyed Merida’s bow and she realized what she did was wrong. When she was overcome by the realization that she destroyed her daughters favorite thing. I wont lie, I wish my mom had a realization like that when I was younger and she made me stop riding horses (taking away your daughters only form of happiness while she was depressed/suicidal was a stupid parenting move, but I digress). We all could connect to the struggle Merida had with her mom in the beginning of the movie and some of us could relate to when they made up and became closer. It is something every woman walking into that theater could relate to on some level and that is powerful. A father/son relationship is common in movies. An accurate depiction of a mother/daughter relationship is not. Hell, a good mother/daughter relationship in the media is hard to find. I was talking to my friend about this and the only show that centered around a mother/daughter relationship that was accurate was Gilmore Girls. There are some good mother/daughter relationships in the media (Mama Rizzoli and Jane for example) but they aren’t central to the plot of the show/movie.
I’ve yet to see someone who has seen the movie who doesn’t love Elinor and Merida. They may like one more than the other but they are both strong women. Elinor truly is the ruler of her kingdom. While Fergus is the king, he doesn’t rule the kingdom. He follows Elinors lead and lets her shine. She truly is the most powerful person in the kingdom and you don’t see Fergus acting like an ass about it. He realizes she is a better ruler and supports his wife. He gives advice when he can but ruling is just not his thing. It’s not something he truly cares about and supports his wife anyway he can. That is a powerful imagine of a working mother (she is running her kingdom after all) and a functional couple. In most Disney movies one or both of the parents are dead. You do not see a couple who are truly supportive of each other in most Disney movies (The Incredibles being one of the few exceptions, which is also a Pixar film). This movie gives women two great female role models, Merida and Elinor. Girls get to see a queen who is highly respected and loved by her people. They get to see her rule her land and be in a powerful position. How many strong powerful queens do you see in Disney movies? None. The Queens are either silent or villains. They also have Merida, who is head strong, independent, and believes in herself. They get a role model who is as confident as her mother and really will fight for what she believes in. She truly is the Princess I wish I had growing up. Not that I don’t love Belle, Ariel, Jasmine, and the other princesses I grew up with but their stories still revolve around the men in their lives not the women. It was nice and refreshing to see a Princess movie just about the women with the men as the background characters. That is truly revolutionary.
While these characters are good role models for girls, they are good role models for boys as well. I am so sick of seeing people think these two women can only be role models for girls. This movie does show kids that girls are just as strong and powerful as boys. Girls can change their fate like boys. Girls can be rulers of their kingdom and not just trophy wives. This movie smashes gender stereotypes (at least with the DunBrough clan). Fergus is a fun loving King who supports his wife. Fergus supports and loves his family. While Elinor is clearly the “head” of the family, Fergus and her support each other and their kids. They love and respect each other. While Fergus is a loveable guy, he isn’t the main character in the movie. He is a background character. The true role models in the movie are Merida and Elinor. They are the ones who are role models for everyone. They are the ones who are smashing gender stereotypes and showing both boys and girls that girls can do and be anything they want. It is showing boys and girls that there really is no “girl” or “boy” things. Elinor does both “men’s things” like running the kingdom and horseback riding (why is this considered a boy thing? I don’t get it but I digress) as well as “girl things” like making her tapestry. Merida in the end helps her mother with her new tapestry of the two of them and loves things like archery and horseback riding. These women are three dimensional characters who like a whole range of things. Neither of them hate “girl things” and devalue them. Merida learns to value what her mother teaches her in the end. These women are role models for both men and women. Fergus is a good character that both boys and girls can love. The triplets are funny and boys and girls can love them. These characters are not just for one gender.
I’m sure somewhere in this rant to tell Lawson to go fuck himself there was a point. My point is, since I probably didn’t make it clear, this movie is revolutionary, especially for Disney. Yes there are problems like the fact there is no POC in the entire movie. This is a movie women do relate to and that is a powerful thing. It is a movie that everyone can love. Merida and Elinor are role models for everyone. It’s nice seeing two powerful women being the lead in a movie and they are not battling it out over something. It shows kids that they can change their fate and they don’t have to do what they don’t want to. The fact it is a girl showing kids that is revolutionary considering girls are still denied agency in most films and society at large.
(Source: lipsredasroses)
The Bold and the Brave
Brave, Pixar’s 13th feature film, is indeed rather brave. Yes, it strays from the romance focus; yes, it gives us a strong female lead; yes, it questions hetero-monogamous-marriage as the happy ending. But the real derring-do comes from the fact that it is woman-centered and focused on a mother-daughter relationship. Less overtly, it also supplies a witty visual onslaught of gender as performance, particularly via the body-swap portion of the narrative in which Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) acts out her uber-feminine ways in big bear drag.
The relationship between the rebellious Princess Merida (Kelly Macdonald), who is more interested in archery and horseback riding than in learning how to be a “proper lady,” and her very proper mother, the queen, captures the complexity of mother/daughter relationships and (mis)communication. Indeed, the film could serve as a companion text to Professor Deborah Tannen’s book You’re Wearing THAT?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation.
Noting that the book was inspired by a reporter asking her, “What is it about mothers and daughters? … Why are our conversations so complicated, our relationships so fraught?” Tannen wrote:
There is a special intensity to the mother-daughter relationship because talk–particularly talk about personal topics–plays a larger and more complex role in girls’ and women’s social lives than in boys’ and men’s. For girls and women, talk is the glue that holds a relationship together–and the explosive that can blow it apart. That’s why you can think you’re having a perfectly amiable chat, then suddenly find yourself wounded by the shrapnel from an exploded conversation.
In the film, Merida and Elinor have many such explosive conversations, with Merida railing against her mother’s attempts to imprison her in the princess box via directives such as, “A princess does not chortle … rises early … above all a princess strives for perfection. … A princess does not raise her voice.” In these exchanges, Elinor comes off not only as an overbearing uber-critical mother, but also as a defender of the patriarchy. However, referring to Tannen again, who speaks of her own mother’s focus on marriage, “I think she was simply reflecting the world she had grown up in, where there was one and only one measure by which women were judged successful or pitiable: marriage.”
Elinor’s quip to Merida, “It’s marriage. It’s not the end of the world,” reveals that she grew up in just such a world. And though the film is set in a mythic past, this is still largely true of our present–so much so that reviewers still have to insist, “The pinnacle of a woman’s achievement doesn’t have to always be a husband.” It is disconcerting that such a statement is still necessary here in 2012.
Also disconcerting is the same reviewer’s claim that, “For all the feminism, the boys will still get a kick out of the movie as well.” Ah, yes, ’cause feminism is sooooo off-putting, especially for the testicle-carrying pack. Thankfully, as Variety put it, “This new Celtic princess comes off as enough of a tomboy to ensure near-universal appeal.” Wow! So male-centered films are “universal,” while ones with females at the helm better have a “tomboy” element so as to be appealing.
A similarly bewildering response is the attempt to “out” Merida as a lesbian simply because she doesn’t wish to marry. For instance, Indiewire claims “Merida goes out of her way to assure middle-American audiences that she is not a lesbian.” (I missed this assurance from Merida, or maybe my more hopeful feminist-viewing self chose not to see it.) More problematically, the reviewer suggests that, despite assurances, “She totally is [a lesbian] and the movie would have been much stronger if it had actually admitted it.” This “she must be a lesbian” read is reductive. Sure, it would be awesome to have a lesbian lead in a family-oriented film, but let’s not force Merida into a sexual-preference label just because she is more interested in horses than in her decidedly unappealing male suitors. To her credit, Merida seems more bent towards a queer take on love than beholden to fitting into any hetero or not-hetero label, as when she asks in a crowd-pleasing speech, “Might our young people decide for themselves who to love?”
What makes the film most brave is not its non-glorification of hetero-romance and it’s poo-pooing of gender norms but that it focuses on female characters relationships with other females. Finally! Yes, readers, this film passes the Bechdel test with flying colors.Not only does it give us a likeable, non-evil woodcarving witch (Julie Walters), it also gives us (gasp!) a mother that is not dead, not jealous, not vengeful and not absent, plus a heroine who does not need saving any more than she needs/wants a man. This is a rarity in any genre, but especially in animation. Sadly, this is what some reviews cite as the weakness of the film. Indiewire, for example, bemoans the focus on the mother/daughter relationship as simplistic:
The movie changes … going from the tale of a plucky young girl who discovers herself and her power (and causes everyone else to acknowledge the same) to being both broader and more simplistic. It’s now about the relationship between her and her mother (Pixar can never walk away from a good buddy movie set-up), and instead of a young girl’s empowerment it’s about things like responsibility, entitlement, selfishness and communication. Things get much, much less interesting.
I’m not sure when responsibility, entitlement, selfishness and communication became so uninteresting. Maybe this is linked to Hollywood as a largely male club where adventure, death count and special effects are what counts as “interesting.” I found the film’s focus on Merida refreshing–not to mention how beyond gleeful I was that Merida never hooks up with, nor shows interest in, male suitors. Furthermore, though she clearly loves her fun-loving hulk of a dad, Fergus, she also loves and defends her mother–unlike the mostly absent mother/father-focused females that precede her. (For example, as noted at Hypable, “Mulan fought in the Chinese army for her father’s honor. Tiana builds a restaurant in her dad’s memory.”) Merida, in contrast, defends her mother, stating defiantly to the evil man-bear Mordo, “I’ll not let you kill my mother.” Sheesh, if only she had been around to tell Walt and crew to keep mom alive.
In addition to its woman-centered tale, Brave also offers a funny take on gender as performance when the very prim and proper Elinor is transformed into a hulking bear with a decidedly non-feminine body. Despite her new furry form, Elinor still “performs” femininity, prancing and posing and doing her best to have “good manners” with her unwieldy claws as she eats berries and fish. Though she can’t speak (perhaps a sly wish-fulfillment on the part of many a daughter, let alone the male filmgoer/maker, that mothers–and women in general–were rendered mute), she is actually able to say volumes with her actions and gestures, allowing for real communication between her and Merida to finally occur. Once the words are out of the way, once the past arguments between mother and daughter become impossible, the way for true communication is made possible. This is no doubt partly due to the fact that Elinor is able to get outside her own role as queen–one she earlier bemoaned by telling Merida, “I can never get away with anything. …I am the example.” Merida, in turn, complains, “My whole life is planned out.” Hence, for both of these females, the role of being female is confining.
Masculinity doesn’t get away without critique either. Instead, men are shown as adopting various masculine tropes as they try to out-macho one another to win Merida’s hand. Their propensity for endless, pointless battle is also skwerered, as they fight their way through the entire film, chasing a bear that does not exist through the castle while unaware of the real adventure, or the real stakes, that are taking place in relation to Merida and Elinor.
Despite its rather groundbreaking depictions of a positive mother/daughter relationship and a princess that doesn’t give a fig for traditional romance, the film is getting a rather meh response. Variety claims, “Brave seems a wee bit conventional by comparison with, say, how radically The Incredibles reinvented the superhero genre … on par with such beloved male-bonding classics as Finding Nemo. The Hollywood Reporter bemoans the “standard-issue fairy tale and familiar girl-empowerment tropes,” arguing that the film “has played it safe instead of taking chances and going for something new.” The Indiewire review cited above complains that as “it’s been this long since they’ve taken on a female protagonist … this really should have been a bolder, more experimental exercise.”
I didn’t find The Incredibles all that radical. White male hero–how experimental! And aiming to be “on par” with a male-bonding classic? Yeah, what we need is more films focusing on male bonding, with females as side candy.
As for the “familiar girl-empowerment tropes,” I wish these were more familiar. We need more girls who can hold their own, who rebel, who fight against being crammed into too-tight dresses and having their hair tamed (as Merida is forced to experience in the film).
I did find the film to be bold, and that is sad. It shouldn’t be a bold move to have a strong female protagonist–but, alas, it still is. As Melissa Silverstein of Women and Hollywood notes, Pixar’s next three planned films will not be about women nor directed by women.
Much like Merida grouses to her mom, “Do you ever bother to ask what I want?,” I feel like asking Hollywood the same question. And I want to tell Hollywood to give us more characters like Merida, Katniss, Lisbeth and Elizabeth Shaw. Give us more good mothers, more complex females characters interacting with one another instead of with the hunk-o’-the month, more women of all ages and colors and sexualities that don’t need saving, and more dads like Fergus, who, instead of “protecting” their daughters, say things like, “Princess or not, learning to fight is essential.”
Princess or not, Merida is brave. So, too, is Elinor. Thank you, Pixar, for finally having the ovaries to peg a summer-tent-pole movie around female characters rather than giving us more Woody.
(Source: damnitdisney)
Beauty & the Beast
So I just rewatched Beauty & the Beast. This is one of my favorite Disney movies, to be honest. It is my second favorite right after the Little Mermaid. That being said, after I rewatched it I liked the Beast a lot better than I did last year when I watched it. Gaston is a manipulative, abusive, asshat who is also really fucking sexist. He tries to manipulate Belle into marrying him and force her to love him. However, she stands up to him and doesn’t put up with his bullshit. She makes him look like an ass on many occasions.
Like with Gaston, Belle stands her ground to the Beast. When he is being a giant asshat, she does not let him get away with it. When he is demanding that she eats dinner with him, she doesn’t. She refuses to give him what he wants when he is being an ass. Even after he rescued her after she ran away, she didn’t let him be an abusive ass guilting her into feeling bad about leaving. She flat out told him, “if you weren’t so mean, I wouldn’t have run away.” She blames him for her running away because of his behavior. She was only there because she wanted to save her father. She had no intention of putting up with his crap and she didn’t. She did get to know him throughout the movie. She realized he was hurting and tried to help him. She never tried to change him though. If he was being an ass, she would ignore him/call him out. He decided to change because he wanted to and wanted to be a better person for her. If he didn’t change on his own, she never would have fallen in love with him. She would have been willing to run away again if he continued to be abusive. He also was an asshole towards everyone in the castle, he didn’t just target her. It was really Lumiere, Cogsworth, and Mrs. Potts who made the beast change, not Belle. They were the ones who kept pushing him throughout the entire movie not to be a giant asshole, especially if he ever wanted to be with Belle/have her love him. Even when she starts to love him, she is willing to drop everything and leave to help her father. Throughout the entire movie, she would do anything to protect her father. It is her father who has to push her into helping the Beast at the end.
Does the movie promote relationship violence? I don’t think so but it wasn’t a healthy relationship. Belle refused to have anything to do with the Beast when he was being a giant asshole. She was willing to run away to escape his behavior and attitude. She would have been willing to do it again if he kept it up. He decided to change when she showed she was not willing to put up with his abuse. She only started to get to know him after he decided to change. He was willing to change for her because he wanted to. He wanted to be a better person for her. He changed because he loved her. She never compromised who she was or was even willing to change for him. Throughout the entire movie she put her father first and would have done anything to protect him. Even after they started getting along and falling for each other, she was still most concerned with her father and making sure he was okay. She was never willing to put him first unless she knew her father was okay.
I do think the movie promotes the message that people are not born bad. The Beast originally only cared about him self but that changed throughout the movie. He let his own desires get in the way of other peoples and protecting people. He let his castle be cursed because he was being an asshole/only cared about himself. He changed because he found someone he wanted to be with and found happiness. Gaston on the other hand was an ass throughout the entire movie and never wanted to change. He wanted things his way and he would be damned if he let anything get in the way. The Beast at the end was willing to stay a beast so Belle could be with her father/save her father. He showed that people are willing to change if they want to. Belle was the reason he changed because he wanted to be a better person for her. He did not change because she wanted him to. While neither character started out as a good person, the Beast found a way to redeem himself because he wanted to. Gaston never wanted to redeem himself and only cared about himself. The beast learned to love throughout the movie.
I wont lie, Belle is one of my favorite characters. I think she is one of the better female leads Disney has created. She is kind, stubborn, intelligent, loving, and unwilling to compromise who she is. She does not change throughout the movie. She refuses to let the men in her life boss her around and treat her like crap. When they treat her badly, she fights back. She publicly humiliated Gaston when she kicked him out of her house and she refuses to put up with his bullshit in the beginning of the movie. When the Beast treated her like crap, she refuses to be with him. When she couldn’t take his crap anymore, she left. Throughout the entire movie you can see that she deeply loves her father and that he is one of the few people who get her. She is willing to do anything to protect him. Like all the other princesses, she is a dreamer. She dreams of adventure and her freedom. She didn’t really know what she wanted in life but she was willing to look for what made her happy. She knew she didn’t want to settle and be forced into some role she would hate. Unlike many of the princesses, she is able to hold her own and she does.
Is Beauty and the Beast a feminist film? No, not by a long shot. However, it isn’t a bad movie. While there are some really problematic elements to it, its not half as bad as the original princess movies (Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty).
(Source: lipsredasroses)
Anonymous asked:
While there are some Disney princesses/heroines who are obviously very strong, possibly feminist characters (such as Mulan), others such, as Aurora and Snow White, are obviously submissive damsels. While some young girls lean towards the strong characters, others want to be that damsel that needs a prince to carry her off into the sunset. What is your view on the effects that the Disney Princesses can have on these future women of the world?
I’m gonna answer this now but I hope someone else will edit and put their personal input in. I grew up watching these movies. When I was younger every year I dressed up as Snow White or Cinderella for Halloween. Snow White was my idol, because of her love of animals. I loved animals. I grew up fine to be honest, obviously since I’m writing on a feminist blog. But I don’t think movies that you watch when you’re a child are going to turn you into a damsel in distress. In life today there are so many children’s movies that have strong female role models such as Tangled, the Princess and the Frog, etc.
![newwavefeminism:
whispermollywobbles:
rinzi-jade:
whispermollywobbles:
god-particle:
buffalobillsfan5:
the next disney princess might be plus-sized
all the other disney princesses are gorgeous and role models for young girls (well, as good of role models as cartoons can be), but i think this girl is just as beautiful, and maybe even a better role model because she represents the average woman
the average american woman is a size 14, and i think it’s time we all start embracing and acknowledging that; the earlier young girls can see that we all come in different shapes and sizes, the sooner they can establish body peace
i think it’s a great idea for disney to start showing even more diversity than they already do :)
Why do they have to mess with everything :(
Disney girls are what they are. I don’t want them to be fat, lesbian bi, deformed or anything else just to cater to the world’s demands. The girls are iconic for everything they are now. Don’t fix what isn’t broken.
Are you kidding me right now? I can’t even formulate a coherent argument against such bigoted stupidity.
Just… shut UP.
My attempt to formulate a coherent argument against such bigoted stupidity.
No one’s trying to change the princesses we already have. They’re lovely, iconic characters. But new princesses shouldn’t be carbon copies of the previous ones; that would take away from their impact because it would pale in comparison to our iconic princesses. Even the princesses we have now have changed over time. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and even Cinderella were passive and lovely princesses waiting for a prince to save them (though Cinderella at least worked up the nerve to go to the ball). Belle and Ariel were dreamers who made real their dreams of traveling to someplace entirely different from where they’d lived their whole lives. Jasmine and Mulan were headstrong and fought against the limitations set upon them by society. And I’m pretty sure Tiana opened and managed her own restaurant despite living in a time when being both African American and a woman made it almost impossible to accomplish. Snow White could have cooked, sure, but she could never manage a business. If they somehow lost their magical fortune and needed to, I guarantee Snow White’s prince would have made all the decisions while she was content to cook and clean all day long.
So Disney princesses have already evolved based on women’s place in society, and I believe they have changed for the better. Belle and Mulan are my personal favorite princesses. How many people do you know who enjoy Sleeping Beauty as a character? Or can even remember her name? I had to look it up to check that she’s Aurora. If keeping up with one aspect of the changing view of women over time can not only maintain but also improve the character of Disney princesses, then addressing other issues can easily do the same. The princess in this image, for example, is no less beautiful than the other princesses. She has a different type of beauty, sure, but Snow White and Jasmine have different types of beauty.
Art reflects life. Our princesses have become more assertive because women have stood up for their rights. Our princesses thus far have not “cater[ed] to the world’s demands.” They have shown us what the world looks like, how women are expected to behave in it based on the time when each princess was created. Creating a plus sized, lesbian, or handicapped princess would not cater to anyone either. It would merely reflect our growing acceptance of all women, not just the pretty ones who clean house for their husbands and keep their mouths shut.
And maybe, just maybe, it would provide young girls with the role models they need to realize it’s okay to be who they are because they are beautiful in their own right no matter what.
All I can say is, THIS.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkwsz6C9KJ1qdl968o1_500.jpg)
the next disney princess might be plus-sized
all the other disney princesses are gorgeous and role models for young girls (well, as good of role models as cartoons can be), but i think this girl is just as beautiful, and maybe even a better role model because she represents the average woman
the average american woman is a size 14, and i think it’s time we all start embracing and acknowledging that; the earlier young girls can see that we all come in different shapes and sizes, the sooner they can establish body peace
i think it’s a great idea for disney to start showing even more diversity than they already do :)
Why do they have to mess with everything :(
Disney girls are what they are. I don’t want them to be fat, lesbian bi, deformed or anything else just to cater to the world’s demands. The girls are iconic for everything they are now. Don’t fix what isn’t broken.
Are you kidding me right now? I can’t even formulate a coherent argument against such bigoted stupidity.
Just… shut UP.
My attempt to formulate a coherent argument against such bigoted stupidity.
No one’s trying to change the princesses we already have. They’re lovely, iconic characters. But new princesses shouldn’t be carbon copies of the previous ones; that would take away from their impact because it would pale in comparison to our iconic princesses. Even the princesses we have now have changed over time. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and even Cinderella were passive and lovely princesses waiting for a prince to save them (though Cinderella at least worked up the nerve to go to the ball). Belle and Ariel were dreamers who made real their dreams of traveling to someplace entirely different from where they’d lived their whole lives. Jasmine and Mulan were headstrong and fought against the limitations set upon them by society. And I’m pretty sure Tiana opened and managed her own restaurant despite living in a time when being both African American and a woman made it almost impossible to accomplish. Snow White could have cooked, sure, but she could never manage a business. If they somehow lost their magical fortune and needed to, I guarantee Snow White’s prince would have made all the decisions while she was content to cook and clean all day long.
So Disney princesses have already evolved based on women’s place in society, and I believe they have changed for the better. Belle and Mulan are my personal favorite princesses. How many people do you know who enjoy Sleeping Beauty as a character? Or can even remember her name?
I had to look it up to check that she’s Aurora.If keeping up with one aspect of the changing view of women over time can not only maintain but also improve the character of Disney princesses, then addressing other issues can easily do the same. The princess in this image, for example, is no less beautiful than the other princesses. She has a different type of beauty, sure, but Snow White and Jasmine have different types of beauty.Art reflects life. Our princesses have become more assertive because women have stood up for their rights. Our princesses thus far have not “cater[ed] to the world’s demands.” They have shown us what the world looks like, how women are expected to behave in it based on the time when each princess was created. Creating a plus sized, lesbian, or handicapped princess would not cater to anyone either. It would merely reflect our growing acceptance of all women, not just the pretty ones who clean house for their husbands and keep their mouths shut.
And maybe, just maybe, it would provide young girls with the role models they need to realize it’s okay to be who they are because they are beautiful in their own right no matter what.
All I can say is, THIS.
(via becauseiamawoman)
