[momraine]

My dd is blond, but with brown eyes. She loved Sleeping beauty only because she had a crown. None of the other ones wore crowns in the movies, at least not ones dd liked. Also the pink dress that changed back and forth to blue at the end of the movie. She has dressed up as pokahontas and others and has barbies of all colors.

[Amandak249]

Ahh....the disney movies.


May I suggest to all of you that you try and get your kids hooked onto Megara?

Hercules has always been my favorite disney movie. I'm sure plenty of you have seen it...but Megara is in my opinion the best female disney protaganist.

She makes many,many mistakes in the movie. She isn't perfect looking. She falls in love but won't admit it- and she makes a deal with Hades and tricks the male hero!

In the end she turns out to be a good person..because it's Disney. She's also Greek/Meditteranean- nothing blond or frilly about her!

[BethanyB]

It does not matter that only a few of them are blond. The fact is that all of the Princess are white. There are other characters that are somewhat of color but those are not the princess' that we see on everything are they?

Whether our kids like the dress or the crown or the story, the message is clear - they don't look like people of color. They don't look like my kids. The MAJORITY of their stuff is white and for people who have children of color - that matters. They will begin to see that very message soon enough and being on the brink of a black princess does not make me feel any better about it.

It's 2009, we shouldn't have to be talking about this now.

[PersianMama]

I haven't read any of the responses, but here's my two cents:

We are big Disney fans. I had seen the various movies with princesses before any of my kids were born, and Mulan has always been my favorite. I am 1/2 Iranian, and my oldest daughter is dark like me. Rather than gravitate to a princess who looked more like her and shared some of her cultural background, like Jasmine, my daughter fell in love with Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. I let her like the princesses. As she got old enough to understand, we talked about the movies and the role of the girls in them. She has always known that I love Mulan and why. My daughter is almost nine now. She is very into fancy, girly things. She also has way better self-esteem than I ever did. She's smart and into science in a big way. She adores science-fiction and other non-girly-girl things. I think we're doing a great job of raising her to be confident and to love herself This is happening even though she adored princesses...My three year old has recently discovered them, and that's fine with me.

If your daughter loves Cinderella, I highly recommend the newer movie Cinderella 3. In it, the evil stepmother reverses time. Cinderella must find a way to win her prince on her own. I think it will calm some of your fears about an overly dependant character.

[rredhead]

Interesting to note about Megara:
In Greek mythology, Megara was the oldest daughter of Creon, king of Thebes. In reward for Heracles' defending Thebes from Orchomenus in single-handed battle, Creon offered his daughter Megara to Heracles... She bore him a son and a daughter, whom Heracles killed when Hera struck him with temporary madness ... In some sources Heracles slew Megara too, in others, she was given to Iolaus when Heracles left Thebes forever.

So, I'm not such a big Megara fan myself. I love the Muses in Hercules though.

I agree that characters and merchandise tends to be more white-centric. More black alternatives are finally appearing. But then I realized that there are few "brown" alternatives, and fewer Asian alternatives.

However, the original question was, essentially, if the mother should be concerned about her child liking Cinderella, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed princess. I would say no. I would also say that Disney is at least trying to get better about diversity in its films, even though they - like most companies - have a long way to go.