I am hearing a lot of commotion about Princess Merida becoming the official 11th Disney Princess and being made over. I fully agree with the complaint too. Merida is a rough and tumble kind of gal, and now she’s slathered in make-up and put in the sparkly dress that looks oddly similar to the one she rebelled against wearing in the movie. It is a slap in the face for feminism to say the least.
But, realistically, would you expect any less from Disney? In the 1930s there were some very well respected female artists and animators that applied to work for Disney, and Walt wrote back (or rather, his secretary did, one has to wonder if she saw the irony in what she was being forced to write for Walt Disney) that women are not considered for any creative positions or training, and that women could only become inkers or painters. It’s not surprising that that part of the Disney legacy is living on.
You might not guess that Disney is a chauvinist company after watching any Disney movie, because the princesses (ie female characters) are the studio’s bread and butter for almost 80 years. In fact, it’s just been recently that Disney has taken any effort to preserve major boy characters. Had it not been for the release of Cars and Toy Story, the “boy” side of the Disney Store would be pretty pathetic looking compared to the glitter and glamor of the Princess side of the store. This was especially true during Halloween time when you’d see tons of girl costumes, then, maybe some Peter Pan costumes for the boys, along with whatever flavor of the year character was out (any remember Hercules, Aladdin, Pheobos, Pinocchio, Arthur, Tarzan, Shang, or Jim Hawkins? The Disney Store sure doesn’t!).
So, then, to me, it’s no real surprise that Merida was given a giant make over during her coronation with Disney. The exact same action was done to Pocahontas and Mulan when the princesses were turned into their own group franchise. And, even though Pocahontas was a strong, independent, female character, compare Merida’s make over to Mulan’s.
When you see Mulan, she always wears the geisha-like kimono (I’m sorry, I’m not sure what the proper term for these are in China) and often with the full geisha-like make up. We don’t see much of soldier Mulan, because she isn’t cutesy, and so Disney has decided she will not sell. Mulan also meet her failures while trying to be the “perfect bride” wearing the kimono dress, and she does not care for the dress. She makes complaints about it, and flat out says she only wears it to try and make her family happy. She’s only “playing a part” to be a bride in the pink kimono, yet that is her one and only image that gets slapped onto Princess franchise items. Isn’t that essentially Merida’s new transformation? Merida wore the dress because her mother forced her, it was a “husband finding” dress, and the dress is the visual center piece for the problems that propel the plot of the film.
And while we’re ever on the subject – Mulan is not, and never has been, a Princess. Her father was not royal, neither was anyone else in her family, and she is not adopted by the Emperor at the end of either movie (almost marries a son of one, but that’s a different issue that also didn’t occur). We presume that eventually Mulan will marry Shang, but he is only a military man, nothing special as far as royalty. And it would not bother me to have Mulan included, but we have had other, legitimate, Disney Princesses left out altogether. Where is Kida? She was the Princess of Atlantis, but, apparently, not pretty or popular enough to make the cut. Arguments could also be made for Gizelle’s exclusion, even though she was only animated for a small portion of Enchanted.
The moral of the story – Disney is here to make money, and they have already decided, after years of being proven right, that little guys buy fairy tales, and families will spend big money to go to the Bibbity Bobbity Boutique to get their daughters (or themselves) decked out in sparkles and fancy dresses. So it’s of little wonder that Disney would try to vamp up Merida to use her as another cash cow. Or, in Mulan, “we’re gonna turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse!”
As a side note, my daughter has a Merida costume. We picked the dark green one, but mainly because it was covered in fancy, celtic glitter swirls. So, yeah, little girls buy the fantasy, not the reality, and as long as that is true, the idea of how a princess will be most profitable will never change at Disney either.
Trying to Mom 