Princess Disney Research Paper

The first and most noticeable change which happened to the Disney’s princesses is the existence of woman of color as the princesses. From the first princess movie in 1937, Disney exclusively uses a White woman or a Caucasian woman as the princess - from Snow White to Belle, all of these princesses are White women. Though the notion of racial discrimination abolishment had been reverberated since 1950s in America, only on the sixth movie in 1992 the first colored princess, Jasmine, appeared as the official Disney’s princess. After Jasmine, impressively and consecutively, Disney releases three more princesses from colored women before using White women again as the princesses.

This existence of princesses from the non-White groups suggests that

The rationale behinds this decision is likelihood because of Orientalism in America. Orientalism in America contains meaning as an expression of cultural superiority by means of material possession and, mostly paying attention to the Arab lands of the Middle East, it began to emerge as a distinct aesthetic as American retail strategy to exploit “Orientalist images of exotic lands associated with luxury and sensuality, if not debauchery” (Rosenblatt, p.53). Therefore, based on this reason, Disney utilized Jasmine as an Arabian princess to be the representation the exoticism, luxury and mysteriousness of Far

In line with Towbin and her colleagues’ statement, looking thoroughly at the princesses, their physical appearances have the standardized beauty which applies to most if not all of the princesses. While it cannot be denied that Disney princess’ movies are pictured to please the eyes of the audience, this portrayal of woman is unrealistic and very idealistic. These distinct features as the cachet of beauty create the fallacy that people must own these distinct features to be called beautiful. The definition of beauty becomes monogamous and it fails to embrace the fact that women come from difference size and appearances. Furthermore, this standardized beauty of the princesses can represent the basic ideas in the society that women are expected to be alluring with sensual features and thin be worthy. As the effect, this representation of beauty will create a disorientation of body-image in the