Women and Hollywood is on break this week. Please enjoy one of our most popular posts of the year below. We will return with new features, editorials, and news stories on Monday, January 5.
After Disney unveiled images of its latest lead, Elsa the Snow Queen in the upcoming Frozen, fans decided hey had had enough of the typical Disney princess, so they made her over. Elsa, per Disney’s usual whitewashing (other lead character Anna is also very white), falls in line with their typical fair skinnned, light hair, blue eyes always wearing a glamorous but impractical gown.
Disney fans on Tumblr, under the hashtag This Could Have Been Frozen, took the new image and redesigned Elsa representing different races and in different (and at times more practical) costumes.
One participant, Rachel McGuffin explained her motivations for the project.
I was feeling rather hopeless about Disney’s whitewashing the past Princesses so I went ahead and racebent their future white characters.
In the Disney Princess Brand — 8 of the 12 princesses are white. This project really brings to light the severity of Disney’s race problem and also shows them that they don’t always have to go with the same generic white route.
Angry Disney fans create their own ethnic princess after latest film features ANOTHER ‘generic’ white female (The Daily Mail)