Girls on Film: The real problem with the Disney Princess brand

The company's wildly profitable Disney Princess line sends a dangerous and regressive message to young girls. It's not too late to fix it.

Princes Merida
(Image credit: Disney)

Disney built its massive Princess empire — which now stretches from 1937's Snow White to 2012's Merida — by sanitizing the stories of the past. From Snow White to The Frog Prince, Disney excised fairy tales of their inherent horror — the rampant cannibalism, torture, and bloody mayhem characteristic of most traditional stories — in favor of a blanket policy of "happily ever after." The literary darkness was cleansed, but despite the company's best efforts, a social darkness has remained.

Disney has a sad history of gross racial stereotypes (from Dumbo's crows to Aladdin's ear-cutting barbarians) and highly problematic female characterizations and storylines (from Snow White's servitude to the Little Mermaid giving up her voice for love). The company's latest in a long string of controversies came last week with the news that Merida, the heroine at the heart of last year's Brave, was becoming a certified Disney Princess.

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Monika Bartyzel

Monika Bartyzel is a freelance writer and creator of Girls on Film, a weekly look at femme-centric film news and concerns, now appearing at TheWeek.com. Her work has been published on sites including The Atlantic, Movies.com, Moviefone, Collider, and the now-defunct Cinematical, where she was a lead writer and assignment editor.