A Reuters article announced that the Walt Disney Company will welcome its first black animated heroine to join the ranks of Cinderella, Snow White, Jasmine, and the other Disney Princesses. “The Frog Princess” will be released in 2009, starring Maddy, a girl from the French Quarter in New Orleans.
The Disney Princesses, in total, have raised over $3 billion dollars in retail sales across the country since 1999. That doesn’t include data from the individual princesses, as they were marketed to young girls. Effectively, this number recognizes the willingness of our society to buy into the happy endings that Disney films promise.
But these happy endings became multicultural only recently. Before Jasmine, the first Disney character of color, was introduced in 1992, all of the princesses Disney marketed to global youth were white: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Belle, and Ariel were familiar faces.
Disney has been heralded as a corporation dedicated to family entertainment and the wishes and dreams of all children. But without representatives from diverse ethnic groups, how can there be happy endings for all?
Furthermore, the company’s animated films, for a great deal of its history, showed only frail women. Snow White, Cinderella, and Ariel all needed saving. So did Jasmine, but to a much lesser extent. Her frailty was far less pronounced. Until Mulan and Pocahontas were marketed, women seemed resigned to have their fairytale ending with a man tied to their hip, or at least predominantly responsible.
Hopefully, with the introduction of Maddy from New Orleans, all that will change. Dreams of a future free of hate and intolerance, the embodiment of the so-called villains that Disney constructs, have no color. Every girl deserves a chance for a happy ending, or at least a dream of one.
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