Do Our Children Really Think Black is Beautiful?

Disney announced early last year that it would be making a feature film with its first ever black princess character. The character, Maddy, lives in the French Quarter in New Orleans and is the star of the new film “The Frog Princess” set for release in 2009.

Disney is typically associated with its lily-white, often blonde-haired and blue-eyed princesses. In fact, the first non-white animated female character (princess or otherwise) was not introduced until 1992. The movie was Disney’s wildly successful “Aladdin” and the heroine was Princess Jasmine. Since then, only two other minority female animated heroines have appeared as a “lead” in a Disney animated film: Native American Indian princess Pocahontas in 1995 and Mulan, who was Chinese, in 1998.

Can you name the five other characters in the Disney Princesses brand? (Answer appears at the end of this post)

Meanwhile, the Disney Princess brand has become the fastest-growing brand for the company’s Consumer Products division with sales topping $3 billion in global retail sales since 1999. Sales items include toys, books, clothing and furniture aimed at girls ages 3 to 8.

And it’s working. My kids are crazy about princesses and I have done my best to stem the flow of tiaras, glitter and princess books into the house. It’s impossible.

As a result, I’ve spent a lot of time watching princess films and reading princess books. I think that the issue of race – and appearance – is really important in what I’ll call “the great princess debate.” A lot of what concerns parents, including me, about the idea of princesses is this notion that princesses are beautiful that maybe gives little girls ideas about beauty that isn’t really attainable. And while our society is a mishmosh of colors, races and ethnicities, our princesses have for years remained varying shades of white – and otherwise a stereotypical view of beauty.

In fact, my daughter recently told me that she was “sad” to have brown eyes. When I asked her why, she replied, “Because princesses have blue eyes.”

This, from a very white, blonde little girl, all of five years old. I cannot imagine the degree to which children from other cultures internalize this stereotype.

So, it leads me to wonder if maybe this introduction of Maddy isn’t a bigger deal than we even know… A whole generation of kids will grow up thinking that princesses come in all colors, and the fact that it will be pretty unremarkable to those kids is, in itself, remarkable.

I wonder the extent to which such a move will be internalized by our children. Do you think that this will change standards of beauty as our children see them?

Psst. The answer to my question above? The five other characters in the Disney Princesses brand are Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Belle (from “Beauty and the Beast”) and Ariel (from “The Little Mermaid”).

You can read more about The Frog and the Princess here.

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