Disney Princess Role Model

For the past seventy-eight years, Disney has been creating disney princess movies, a phenomenon that has swept the world, with worldwide gross of up to six hundred million dollars. Little girls from the age of two watch and enjoy these chauvinist movies, spending hundreds on outfits so that they can resemble their most idealized princess. The official disney princess line-up includes Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, and Merida. While a single caucasian girl’s dream is blossoming, dreaming about the multiple princesses she could grow up to be, an african american girl’s is falling to pieces, with only a single idealized role model to chose from. While a child yearns for a prince to sweep
While this may seem a step in the right direction, all of the disney princesses have altered clothes that make them seem like objects, not humans to be admired. In Mulan’s case, she is dressed in an imperial kimono, with a bejeweled obi and flowing sparking skirt. She embodies a perfect chinese princess - exactly what she was not intended to be. Mulan centers around the titular character trying to empower women through casting aside traditional female roles. The first scene and song “Reflections” entails how Mulan despises fancy dresses and arranged marriages. This new design overturns all her character development, showing that Mulan cannot be a princess without the proper princess attire. The new designers lighten Jasmine's and Pocahontas’s skin, utilizing white highlights, making Tiana the only true dark skinned princess. Surrounded by light skinned princesses, a dark-skinned child would feel left out, her dream of being a princess far out of reach. Despite the alleged growth in America’s policy toward diversity, Disney seems to have been left behind, still setting for the same explicit message of light over dark
Surely, this one ray of hope to the poor child will allow her to continue her dreams. Perhaps, she could start her own restaurant, just like Tiana. However, there is a single flaw in that plan; the only reason Tiana was able to start a successful business was because of her rich husband, Prince Naveen. As shown in the beginning of Princess and the Frog, Tiana works long and hard hours, trying to save up for a building to start a restaurant. Unfortunately, she never accomplishes this goal, and complains to the stars, when she meets her prince frog. While not explicitly shown as a damsel in distress, Tiana certainly is not the strong independant women that many people