Help! I’m a Feminist But My Daughter is a “Princess Fanatic”! Disney's Transformation of Twenty-First-Century Girls

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Alisa Clapp-Itnyre

Abstract

As I began this paper, my then four-year-old daughter, Annetta, sat singing “Part of Your World” from Disney’s Little Mermaid, playing with her Pocahontas Barbie doll, wearing her Cinderella dress, and planning to watch Disney’s Snow White for the umpteenth time that night... and I wondered where I had gone wrong. From dolls to lamps, bikes and bathing suits, underpants and toothpaste, the  “Princess theme” is everywhere. Disney is cleverly pulling together all its heroines from earlier film classics — Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty — and adding the latest versions—Belle, Jasmine, Ariel, now even Tiana—to create a whole world populated by women whose only desire is to marry a prince. Kids now attend “princess” ice shows in costume and throw “princess” birthday parties — while parents (like me) pay for all the souvenirs and party supplies. Is there anything that goes beyond consumerism and sexist fairy tales in the Disney formula? I am not the only scholar-parent asking this question and, drawing upon the published record as well as my own very “intimate” knowledge of Disney’s Princesses, I will consider in this paper the transformation of girls today into “sleeping beauties,” “material girls,” and potentially even “radical feminists” after having been “touched” by the Disney spell.

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