Last week, a plus-sized fashion blogger made a sweeping declaration on Cosmopolitan: we need a plus-sized Disney princess, and we need one now.
Loey Lane, the blogger who made the eye-opening statement while wearing a too cute Ariel-inspired bathing suit, had a couple amazing points.
“We can’t all look exactly the same and that’s a huge reason why I think it’s so important for there to be more diversity in everything that young boys and girls consume,” she said.
In fact, almost all of Disney’s protagonists subscribe to the same overdone, impossible-to-reach standard of beauty. You’d be hard-pressed to find a plus-sized character that wasn’t either completely evil or used for comedic relief. Lane pointed out that as a child Ursula was the only character she could find that was close to her body type — and Ursula is a terrible, evil character. It’s not really a character a little girl would look up to (unless you’re grooming a future serial killer or something of the sort).
“The fact that the closet thing to my body that I could get was Ursula just hurt me so badly as a kid,” she told Cosmo. “And I grew up never saying that I wanted to be a princess or playing princess with the other girls,” she continued. “I know that it would have boosted my self esteem if I had had someone that I could relate to … or someone that looked remotely like me.”
Lane dubbed herself the “Not-so-little Mermaid” while taking a stand against unrealistic beauty standards.
Let’s face the facts: 99 percent of us do not look like Elsa from Frozen. If Elsa was a real, living human, even Elsa wouldn’t look like Elsa. Of course, cartoons have exaggerated human features, so we’re not asking for something that looks just like us, we’re asking for something that looks a little more like us.
The average American adult woman is a size 16. The average Disney princess is probably more like a 00. This is not okay. We can have the ultra-skinny princesses (because some of us are ultra-skinny), but we also need some curvy girls, too! Disney has made leaps when it comes to being more inclusive — they recently added the first ever Latina princess and showcased what seemed like a lesbian character in Finding Dory. Adding a plus-sized Princess seems like a no-brainer, so Disney, can you get on that?
For anyone who says that a plus-sized Disney Princess wouldn’t be pretty or would glorify an unhealthy lifestyle, you’re flat-out wrong, and here’s proof. An Australian artist named Ashley Beevers illustrated our Disney faves as gorgeous, plus-sized, 1950’s pinup girls. How can you say this isn’t beautiful? How can you say these girls look unhealthy? Every little girl has a right to unapologetically love their body and see it represented in the media they consume.
Ariel
Belle
Rapunzel
Merida
Tiana
Tinkerbell
