A lot of people tend to criticize the Disney princesses as being anti-feminist which, as a mature grown-up adult who is a fan of Disney movies but recognizes that other people may have different opinions and legitimate criticisms, I tend to respond to something like this:
NO NO NO NO DISNEY IS AWESOME STOP SAYING THAT IT’S OKAY DISNEY PRINCESSES I WILL SNUGGLE YOU ALL AND PROTECT YOU FROM THE MEAN PEOPLE 
But once I get over my irrational princess love, even I have to admit a lot of feminist criticism of Disney princesses is legitimate. Early Disney princesses didn’t have very much agency. Worryingly, Frozen looks like it’s going to continue Tangled’s focus on the hero in lieu of the princess. Pocahontas is amazingly racist.* Beauty and the Beast depicts an abusive relationship. We’re probably not going to get a lesbian princess, a disabled princess, or a princess who isn’t conventionally attractive. And don’t get me started on the merch. “Sparkling Princess Mulan,” Disney? Really? Really?
So Disney princesses are bad! Instead we should let girls watch all the other coming-of-age stories that feature female protagonists with a wide variety of personalities, about a third of whom are women of color, and which thanks to their variety of female villains and side characters almost always pass the Bechdel test.**
Oh wait.
There aren’t any.
Seriously, look at the diversity here. Merida and Mulan and Rapunzel as your grrrl-power ass-kicking princesses! (And also different kinds of ass-kicking: Rapunzel has more Power of Love, while Mulan has more Power of Passing Grades In Physics.) Belle, the shy intelligent girl who reads all the time! Tiana, who works her ass off to get her restaurant! Pocahontas, who’s a hippie (Jesus, Pocahontas is racist)! Jasmine, who weaponizes her femininity to defeat Jafar!
(And that’s not even getting into subversive readings of the text. Mulan as trans man or Rapunzel as abuse survivor, anyone?)
One of the most common criticisms of “princess culture” is that it teaches girls that their only goals should be being pretty and marrying a handsome prince. Except, uh… have the people who made that criticism seen any of the films post-Disney-Renaissance? Ariel, Rapunzel, and Jasmine all want to explore the world and escape from their overprotective parents. Pocahontas wants an end to colonialism. Belle wants to protect her father. Mulan wants to keep the Huns from invading China. Tiana wants to own a restaurant (and then when she becomes a princess she is like “fuck this princess thing, I’m going to have my restaurant!” and makes Prince Naveen work as a waiter because Tiana is awesome). Personally, I am entirely okay with encouraging girls to love their parents, seek independence, and stop people from invading countries. That sounds like a plan.
Okay, yes, Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora are pretty boring. To be fair, their princes are also really boring. There were a lot of really boring people in those movies. (What? Me? Biased?) Let’s look at this scientific chart of Interesting Characters In Sleeping Beauty, By Gender:
[Maleficent and the fairies, people. I'm sorry I gave Maleficent so little of the pie chart, because Maleficent is a BAMF, but the Fairies should get more because there are three of them and they have to share.]
I feel like a lot of people’s hatred of Disney princesses comes less from their being startlingly more anti-feminist than everyone else, and more because they’re girly and pink and focused on romance and ewwwww femininity cooties get them off get them off. (I don’t think it’s an accident that the princesses that usually get the Feminist Pass are also the least feminine ones, either.) There’s this disturbing tendency among a lot of people who fancy themselves feminists to hate feminine things. It’s okay, guys. Hating things conventionally associated with women isn’t misogynistic at all. You are Best Feminists, I’m sure.
*Although they did hire Native American consultants for the film and used mostly Native American voice actors. Which is cool.
**Dammit, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, shape up.
Agreed, on almost every particular (I love Disney), except this:
I live with two small girls, and was pleased and surprised to discover that there are any number of Barbie movies, and Tinkerbell movies, that often feature racially diverse characters* and almost always pass the Bechdel test with flying colors.
There’s a lot wrong with those movies – some of them are better written than others, some are more sexist than others, all of them are filled right up to the enormous sparkly eyes with regressive notions of “pretty.” The computer animation is cheap and tends heavily towards the uncanny valley (which kids don’t seem to mind at all). But if you have a daughter or niece and want her to see a bunch of movies featuring girls as active, primary characters who interact with each other and aren’t focused on boys, Barbie and Tinkerbell straight-to-video movies often rock.
*Although I’ve yet to see one where the lead girl wasn’t white. So that’s a way that Disney has the others beat.
…Barbie? That I did not expect. *makes a note*
I was just reading that page about “Pocahontas” you linked to. From a Bechdel Test perspective, this bit is interesting:
It’s not a traditional princess movie, but I think Vanillope from Wreck-It Ralph counts as a disabled Disney Princess.
KellyK, I read her character as disabled as well.
Speaking pretty personally, I think a lot of the reason people have a special hatred for Disney is due to how thoroughly the Princesses have infiltrated girl culture, to the point where it could be argued that they define femininity for pre-pubescent girls. On Halloween, do an informal count of how many little girls are dressed up as not just princesses, but as specific Disney Princess characters. That is what a disturbing number of girls want to be. Not disturbing because it is bad, but because it is the only option little girls see themselves as having. Once a girl is enthralled, she can spend years swimming in Disney Princess artifacts, from Disney Princess toothpaste to Disney Princess bicycles. As a parent, I resent Disney not just because it does too little for my daughter, but because it wants so much of her, and knows exactly how to get it. It seems hopeless to fight Disneyfication; I have tried, and failed. So for me it’s not just the gratingly awful stereotypical gender types I object to, it’s the absolute and total saturation of Disney into modern girl culture. I know exactly why Disney won’t make a movie for my daughter that isn’t about a princess: it’s because they know that wouldn’t make as much money. I understand why profit is more important than parenting for Disney. A tiny bit of me thinks it’s downright evil that they are making this calculation with girls’ childhoods, and that there’s nothing I can do about it.
Maybe this makes me a Bad Feminist (TM), but I don’t read Beauty and the Beast as being about an abusive relationship because at the time the abuse occurs, there is no relationship. Belle doesn’t fall in love with the nasty Beast and inspire him to turn nice – she rescues him from bleeding to death in the snow because she is nice, he shapes up, and only then does she grow to feel affection for him.
I could of course be biased because Belle was always my “personal Princess” – the one I identified with the most. Outcast bookworm brunette? Yep!
Actually, the most infuriating Princess to me is Cinderella. Of all the ones who are legitimately the protagonists of their films (i.e. not Aurora, because it really is the Good Fairies who are the viewpoint characters and have the most screen time), she demonstrates the least agency. At least Snow White proactively installs herself as the head of the Dwarfs’ household! Cinderella literally does nothing to move her own story forward. She just knuckles under to her stepfamily and her various allies arrange matters to favor her.
All that…and she is the one Disney upholds as the most visible face of the Princess brand. It’s her castle in Walt Disney World, her “fairytale wedding package” they sell, she’s usually front and center on the packaging of the various Princess products. I find it incredibly galling.
Wow, long post. I guess I’m pretty passionate about Disney Princess. About Disney in general, but with the Princess stuff it crashes headlong into my feminism.
Also, I don’t think “Rapunzel as abuse survivor” is subversive at all. I think it’s the fucking point. They researched psychological abuse in order to write Gothel’s dialogue and design her behavior.
I too love Disney. I have a hard time squaring many of the movies with my feminist principles, but I can forgive myself for that, because when you love something as an indiscriminate child you are pretty much stuck loving it for life. (Enid Blyton’s fabulously sexist Famous Five books, anyone? Still dear to my heart even though I know how appalling they are now!)
“One of the most common criticisms of “princess culture” is that it teaches girls that their only goals should be being pretty and marrying a handsome prince.”
I think you’re quite right in saying this isn’t ALL the princesses teach us at all. There are genuinely some excellent messages being sold to kids in princess packaging; stuff about kindness and honour and courage and intelligence and hard work, and that’s great. The majority of parents aren’t total morons, and they wouldn’t give this stuff to their kids if there was nothing positive in it. Where the poison seeps in, I think, is in teaching little girls that although being pretty and marrying the prince isn’t enough by itself, it is an integral part of existence. It contributes to a sense that other talents and achievements aren’t quite enough and don’t really count unless you’re also beautiful and marrying a prince, because without those things you’ll never be a princess no matter what.
It adds to this sense that girls are growing up with that they can ace their exams, get all their girl-scout badges, and master kindness and empathy; but if they don’t also have pert boobs and a tiny waist and glossy hair and a boyfriend on one knee with a ring, then they’re still not making the grade.
On a lighter note, because you already noted that Sleeping Beauty is pretty crappy – a couple of friends and I re-watched this movie just last night, and I noticed something really weird that I never noticed as a kid. Neither Aurora nor Philip has ANY lines after the scene where Philip is captured in the cottage by Maleficent. Not a single one. Philip goes through that whole thing where Maleficent taunts him in the dungeon, and he rattles his chain about but says nothing. The good fairies turn up to spring him and give him magical weapons, and they yell bits of advice at him as he’s escaping and battling the dragon, but Philip just looks fierce and brave and juts his chin out a lot and says nothing. And of course in the end he rocks up to the tower and wakes the sleeping princess with a kiss, and then they both go pay silent homage to their families. You’d think after sixteen years Aurora might have SOMETHING to say to her parents, but they just hug briefly and then Philip and Aurora go dancing silently around the courtyard gazing blissfully into each others eyes. It pretty much weirded me out and made me wonder if the voice actors suddenly passed away in a tragic accident or something. It’s frigging creepy when your two protagonists have literally nothing to say for themselves past the midpoint of the movie!
That thing about Beauty and the Beast actually occurred to me as well. The Disney story is different from the old fairy tale in (I think) several possibly-abusiveness-reducing ways, and IIRC includes the Beast’s struggle to not be an asshole.
The stuff you describe above does kind of strike me as reconstructions, not undeconstructed stuff.
>So Disney princesses are bad! Instead we should let girls watch all the other coming-of-age stories that feature female protagonists with a wide variety of personalities, about a third of whom are women of color, and which thanks to their variety of female villains and side characters almost always pass the Bechdel test.**
>Oh wait.
>There aren’t any.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
@griffykate
I’ve noticed that about Sleeping Beauty as well, and in fact for Aurora it starts even earlier – once she puts on her “princess dress” and becomes Aurora (rather than the woodsy peasant Briar Rose), she has no more speaking lines.
I don’t think Disney did it on purpose, but there’s something ironically appropriate about it. You could see it as a deconstruction of the “fairytale princess” and “Prince Charming” roles. As Briar Rose and the independent Philip who annoys his royal father with his gadabout hobbies, they sing and dance and fall in love with each other. Once she is a Princess and he is the handsome Prince going to rescue the Princess, they do not speak. They are still in love, but they express it rather mechanically, as if they are in love only because they are required to be by their roles in the story.
I don’t know what the actual reason for it is. The voice actors didn’t die, but the movie was running far over budget, so maybe their lines were cut for financial reasons. It does make for an interesting point for analysis, though!
Yeah, I think the main criticisms of Disney princesses have to come down on Disney-the-merchandising-machine, rather than Disney-the-storyteller. Because I don’t get any sense that the merchandise is personalised to the character of the princesses, or the plot of the film; the various princesses get reduced down to “the blonde one, the brunette one, the arab one, the black one…”
In other words, they’ve become purely decorative, interchangeable objects. And that isn’t feminist.
(You might ask: “how could a piece of merchandise show personality and agency?” Well, how about picturing the characters actually *doing* something, rather than just posing decoratively?)
Instead we should let girls watch all the other coming-of-age stories that feature female protagonists with a wide variety of personalities, about a third of whom are women of color, and which thanks to their variety of female villains and side characters almost always pass the Bechdel test.**
Oh wait.
There aren’t any.
Umm, many Miyazaki films fit this description to a T, except for their lack of dark-skinned main characters. But considering that almost every Disney film, from The Lion King to Tangled, has a good=beautiful&fair, bad=dark&ugly thing going –which actually bothers me more than any of the specifically gender-related stuff, with the exception of a few things like the rape-culturey “Kiss The Girl” scene from The Little Mermaid — I know which set of films I’d rather give little kids to watch. (Not that they can’t have both.)
I also think part of the reason Disney films are criticized so heavily is precisely BECAUSE they’re the one mainstream American thing that is considered safe and wholesome for little girls to watch, and assumed to teach only positive messages. And because many of us grew up loving them, it can make for a big “Aha!” moment to return to them as an adults and realize how many problematic messages they send. Though at the same time it does hurt to hear that Beauty and the Beast is about Stockholm Syndrome.
One of the more interesting readings of The Little Mermaid is of Ariel as a trans character in her longing to break away from life under the sea and live on land, a passion that started long before she met the prince of the story.
Thomas: My Little Pony is apparently under a contractual requirement to have a racefail once per season. Dooooesn’t count.
SpudTater: Or even have the princesses in the dress they’re wearing for most of the movie as opposed to the Most Fancy Dress Possible? Aaaagh. No, the merchandise machine is pretty much indefensible. >.>
Disney has good points and bad points, but it certainly isn’t all too blame. I wrote about the Bechdel Test and *this* very subject a few days ago, spurred on by a review I recently did of the Jack and the Giant Slayer movie. I think what people need to realise is that we should be making informed decisions when faced with any choice – be it a film or a toy. It’s not 1937 any more (the year Snow White was made). The times have changed and so have girls and women.
>Thomas: My Little Pony is apparently under a contractual requirement to have a racefail once per season. Dooooesn’t count.
Oh? I haven’t actually watched a complete season of MLP, could you point out precisely what happened, please?
Thomas: Zecora the zebra is a really awful exoticizing stereotype of a Magic African person. There was an episode with buffalo that were clearly intended to be Native Americans in which we learned about the importance of compromise between buffalo and ponies, which is at best incredibly insensitive given that the Native Americans did compromise with settlers and then got genocided.
@Ozy
It irks me every time they show one of these distinctly non-white cultural analogues represented by animals other than Ponies. The obvious implication is that the Ponies themselves – the “normal” characters the audience is supposed to identify with – are meant to be read as white. In the given context, the citizens of Ponyville never having seen a zebra before is like the residents of an American town never having seen a black person before.
On the other hand, since the ponies’ colors don’t match any real human skin color (or horse coloration, for that matter), it’s harder to back up racism charges about the non-Zecora, non-buffalo episodes.
It is really sad, though, that Zecora isn’t ever shown just hanging out with pony characters outside of “Luna Eclipsed;” instead, she’s somebody the ponies occasionally go to for advice and basically ignore the rest of the time. Because that is exactly how you treat people of other races, kids! Only talk to them when you need something, then leave them the fuck out of your social life! Ugh.
” which is at best incredibly insensitive given that the Native Americans did compromise with settlers and then got genocided.”
Yeah, the best outcome of conflict between imperialists and indigenous people is for an arrangement, where the indigenous people are only somewhat colonised. Yay, compromise! Why can’t we all just get along?
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I honestly can’t disagree with the assessments of racefails in MLP; both those episodes were pretty bad ideas, using race metaphors in order to deliver lessons which didn’t really require them. Zecora does also have one scene in Just for Sidekicks where she’s casually in Ponyville, but she’s acting as the magical person with exotic foreign knowledge again there.
(On the other hand, Pocahontas does sound like something of a magical Native American, moreso than the Buffalo; while they have a leader and culture which follows the stereotype of the noble savage, the individual Buffalo are very clearly shown to primarily differ from the ponies in size.)
Still, the show does technically fit the requirements of “coming-of-age stories that feature female protagonists with a wide variety of personalities, about a third of whom are women of color, and which thanks to their variety of female villains and side characters almost always pass the Bechdel test”, if blue, purple, and yellow are still colors. It’s also far better on every *other* count than the Disney films.