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The influence Disney has on little girls starts at a young age. Usually as infants, girls are engrossed in the "princess" culture.

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A survey mentioned in the website indicates that once girls have watched a Disney movie they are much more likely to act like a stereotypical girl. This can largely alter the viewers personality and produce long-term consequences.

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Are Disney Princesses Bad for Girls' Self Esteem?

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Researchers at Brigham Young University found that playing with Disney princesses could make children more susceptible to stereotypes

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The video depicts a woman, Melissa May, performing slam poetry about her outrage for Disney reducing Ursala's (The Little Mermaid's Antagonist) figure in order to sell a doll.

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Melissa May - "Dear Ursula" (WoWPS 2014)

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This article delves into the issue that Disney is yet to address. Body Type. Since the rise of feminism in the 21st Century, we've witnessed Disney altering its perception of what a Disney princess should act like. The more modern princesses are brave, outspoken, and confident. Yet, Disney has not introduced a size 16 princess. The thinness represented in these women is still present - especially in its marketing.

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Despite advances in the rhetoric on race and gender, Disney lags in advancing their portrayal of body image. Princesses and other female protagonists are displayed with size zero waists, skinny limbs, and even small feet. This unnatural, and unhealthy, body size presented in Disney's animated characters however, is what society calls for. The "thin ideal" has existed in American culture since the 1960s, and it is still increasingly prevalent today in numerous forms of media . Our society views a slender, hourglass figure as beautiful , and the media reflects that. Also, the media influences society - the impact goes both directions ("Disney Princesses & Disappearing Waistlines" 2009). Disney follows society's expectations of stereotypical beauty with its animations. If the company were to present a woman with a different body type, society may not find her beautiful, and Disney could risk losing popularity and profit from the production. Disney has continued this trend since the earliest productions with female leads. Disney movies present the idea of beauty that society seeks, but then also increase the negative influence of the "ideal" body type. Despite the negative response from a portion of its audience, Disney continues to adhere to the unchanged cultural definition of typical beauty and has made little to no effort to alter the standard over the years; Disney's rhetoric on body image demonstrates to viewers that to be beautiful and successful, one must be thin.

Artist, Meridith Viguet, dissects the "anatomy of Disney."

Elsa, one of the two female protagonists of , is known to be a strong, independent woman. There a distinct moment in the film during the song "Let It Go" when she transforms from a scared, trapped queen, to a free, powerful individual. Though this moment is positive rhetoric on her gender, the display of her body shape transforms at the same moment to appear like the stereotypical Disney princess. Before, her clothing was very conservative and did not particularly define her features; when Elsa undergoes her transformation, her attire is extremely skimpy and revealing, and does nothing but highlight her tiny waist and considerable bust. This commentary on body image essentially presents to the viewer that strong, successful women are also skinny and ideally fulfill society's perception of beauty. Her sister, Anna, by the way, has an almost identically thin figure throughout the film.

The female protagonist in Disney's production , Megara, is treated as merely a sexual interest by the men in the film. She, too, has a strong personality for a female character, as she is independent and defiant, and plays a large role by helping defeat the antagonist and saving Hercules. Yet, Meg is known as the skinniest, most outrageously shaped female Disney character of all. She has exaggerated curves with an almost nonexistent waist. Throughout the picture, it seems as if Hercules is attracted to her based on solely her appearance, rather than her character, which is apparent in their first meeting in the way he reacts to her movements and her comments. In fact, Meg is very smug and often tricks Hercules, and the plot line presents little reason for why Hercules would be interested in Meg's personality. In an episode of the TV series version of Hercules, Meg " shows very little remorse in using her sexual abilities to manipulate the young Hercules" ("Megara" 2014). In addition to promoting society's thin ideal, Megara encourages the idea of appearance over personality within relationships, and the use of sexuality to attain what one desires.

, a film released by Disney but produced by Pixar, featured a young girl with a much more normal figure than a usual Disney princess. It seemed to be an improvement on Disney's depiction of beauty, as Merida, the princess, is a strong, successful female character even without the stereotypically thin body shape. The Disney company, however, took the innocent Pixar-created character, and completely transformed her in their toy line. As presented in the images above, the Merida doll is highly contrasting in body shape and overall appearance to the animated character. Her waist and arms are thinner, her hips and bust are curvier, and her face appears years older - caked in makeup. Brenda Chapman, Merida's creator, argued, "She was a princess who looked like a real girl, complete with the 'imperfections' that all people have...By making her skinnier, sexier, and more mature in appearance, you are sending a message to the girls that the original, realistic, teenage-appearing version of Merida is inferior" (Child 2013). Disney persisted in its negative rhetoric on body image through altering Merida's appearance to adhere to society's expectations of an attractive princess. Massive criticism of over two hundred thousand petition signatures forced Disney to remove the Merida toy from its online market. Members of society have recognized the need for characters to appear like the original Merida in order to promote more positive, realistic beauty standards in the media. Even with strong popular opposition, Disney continues to promote cultural stereotypes of beauty as to not stray from their traditions.

Furthermore, there is a stark contrast in the appearance of Disney villains compared to the female protagonists. Ursula, from The Little Mermaid, Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, Mother Gothel from Tangled, and Lady Tremaine from Cinderella, for example, are female antagonists of their films and all possess traits culturally defined as unattractive. In both their facial features and their body shape, these characters are specifically designed by Disney to appear ugly and frightening. Ursula is a giant octopus and completely contrasting in figure to Ariel's size zero body. Maleficent and Mother Gothel (as an old woman) are not necessarily larger in body size than the princesses of their films, but their body features, including hands, face shape, and hair, are quite eerie. Mother Gothel, in her younger form, however, and Lady Tremaine each possess a normal body shape, but seem almost overweight in comparison to the princesses. The female antagonists of Disney animations are strikingly presented in a similar unattractive manner. The intimidating features do add to the character, but the larger body shape often has no purpose. Through the villains, Disney comments on body image, demonstrating that beautiful is good, and ugly is bad. Yet, these generalizations are not related to what the individual viewer may imagine as beautiful or ugly, but instead based on society's stereotypes. The distinct presentation of the villains' unappealing look highlights Disney's rhetoric on body image, as it promotes and worsens society's negative outlook on the ideal body.

In 2012, Disney released a line of their previous features, the dolls of the female characters all have bodies just like those of the classic princesses. Even Ursula, perhaps Disney's largest female character ever created, was slimmed down to look similar to the size of Ariel. Consumers interested in dolls are more likely to purchase one that looks similar to "designer collection" villain dolls. Described by a Disney blogger to "capture the essence of evil at its best dressed," these dolls present the villain's bodies essentially placed in a Barbie doll-shaped mold ("Introducing the Villains Designer Collection at Disney Store" 2012). Regardless of Barbie or other popular toys. A doll based off a giant octopus would not adhere to cultural standards of what a doll should look like. As it seems to be a marketing technique to sell more merchandise, Disney's adaptations to the villain's bodies contributes negatively to their rhetoric on Disney, commenting that for beauty to sell, it must be the beauty society expects t0 see - thin and flawless.

Slam poet, Melissa May criticizes Disney's actions of promoting cultural stereotypes in her piece "Dear Ursula."

Disney's rhetoric on body image both reflects and impacts society's perception of beauty. The ideal of a thin body that is so deeply ingrained in our culture and outlets like Disney only worsen the prevalence of the stereotype. Though many women have spoken out against the negative body image promoted by Disney, the main audience affected is young girls. In fact, Why can't we have an average sized princess, or even an overweight princess? Disney has made a great step in attempting to break down racial [and gender\ stereotypes, now, why can't we continue that momentum to encompass weight [as well\?" ("Disney Princesses & Disappearing Waistlines" 2009). For any societal progress on the matter, it is essential that Disney restructure its rhetoric on body image. Jewel Moore, an American high school student began a Change.org a 2009 experiment conducted by Professor Hayes and Professor Tantleff-Dunn revealed "that a third of girls under the age of six admit to worrying about being fat, and when asked to select the "real princess" from a choice of ballerinas, 50% of the girls chose the thinnest one" (Davidson 2014). When girls are led to believe a cultural definition of beauty at a young age, it easily follows them into adolescence and adulthood and continues to affect their ideas of the ideal body. The abundance of identically skinny Disney princesses and other female heroines causes young girls to grow up idolizing these "impossibly thin" protagonists, and then "become young women who perpetuate and buy into the idea that thin is the only acceptable form of beauty" ("Disney Princesses & Disappearing Waistlines" 2009). Cultural expectations of beauty will never change unless the media, particularly outlets like Disney that impact young viewers, promote more positive standards - standards encouraging beauty in all shapes and sizes. A blogger questioned, " petition for Disney to create a plus-size princess; the petition, entitled 'Every Body Is Beautiful' gained over 22,000 signatures. Moore recognized the need for a positive role model in the media to promote a healthy body image in young girls (Beaumont-Thomas 2014). Disney, as a leading media company, must stand up and act on this stagnant issue; it is unacceptable for every Disney princess to appear absurdly slim. If Disney altered its presentation and commentary on body image to promote a variety of body types, other forms of media may very well follow their lead, and overarching cultural perceptions of beauty could be influenced in response.

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Despite advances in the rhetoric on race and gender, Disney lags in advancing their portrayal of body image. Princesses and other female protagonists are displayed with size zero waists, skinny limbs, and even small feet. This unnatural, and unhealthy, body size presented in Disney's animated characters however, is what society calls for.

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Conradt, S. (2013, October 22). The Faces Behind Disney's Princesses. Retrieved from Mental Floss: http://mentalfloss.com/article/53135/faces-behind-disneys-11-princesses

Haines, R. (2016, June 24). Why Disney princesses and 'princess culture' are bad for girls. Retrieved from The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/24/princess-culture-is-bad-for-girls-now-theres-proof/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a4f3ac6be108

May, M. (Director). (2014). Dear Ursala [Motion Picture]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=211&v=xLSnNSqs_CQ

Meredith, F. (2017, December 1). Fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty have become new targets for the thought-police. Retrieved from Belfast Telegraph: https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/fionola-meredith/fairytales-such-as-sleeping-beauty-have-become-new-targets-for-the-thoughtpolice-36367746.html

POPSUGAR (Director). (2016). Is Disney Princess Culture Hurting Young Girls? [Motion Picture].

Post, T. W. (Director). (2016). The Problem with Disney Princess Movies [Motion Picture].

Santoro, A. (2017, August 28). Mom Gives Her Daughter's Disney Princess Book a Seriously Awesome Feminist Makeover. Retrieved from Pop Sugar: https://www.popsugar.com/family/photo-gallery/42824146/image/42824156/princess-kind-badass

Sayley, K. (2016, June 22). Are Disney Princesses Hurting Your Daughter's Self-Esteem? Retrieved from Time: http://time.com/4378119/disney-princess-effect-on-girls/

The Rhetoric of Disney. (n.d.). Body Image. Retrieved April 7, 2019, from The Rhetoric of Disney: https://therhetoricofdisney.weebly.com/body-image.html

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Authored by a licensed psychologist, this article delves into the possibility that the 'Princess Culture" can be empowering as much as it can be oppressive. Under the right context, little girls can imagine themselves the heroine of their own story and grow into confident young women.

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What is it about little girls and princesses? Having grown up during the heyday of feminism, I was disinclined to all that was girly, pink, cloying, candy colored. It seemed to me that the cult of pink, which I assumed parents must have foisted on their little girls, was oppressive and devaluing, a kind of disempowering caricature of personhood.

Pink and all that the color represented, it struck me at the time, was a cultural shackle that little girls needed to be shielded from, since it was inevitably going to hold them back.

Little did I know that I would come to feel differently when I welcomed my own little girl into the world. I did my best not to conform to stereotypes when I bought her all different colors of clothing, studiously avoiding pink. Until my daughter was two, I never even purchased anything pink, and kept all pink clothing that had been inherited or given to my daughter off her, unless the gift giver was visiting.

One could say I had a phobia about pink. And yet as soon as my daughter could speak, almost as soon as she had out grown out of her first pair of carefully chosen gender neutral yellow sneakers, she started gravitating toward pink, almost in the manner than a sunflower strains toward the sun.

Actually her proclivity to pink seemed to parallel her situating herself in the gender category of "girl." It was a logical sequence in her little mind. "I am a girl. Girls wear pink. Therefore, everything I wear and possess, should, optimally, be pink."

Now I realize she may have been an extreme; some girls might like pink but not make a religion of it as my little one had. And yet, pink, for better or for worse, is what is referred to as a "signifier" of the feminine (children who are gender variant, i.e. do not identify with what is called the natal body, seem to traffic in pink as a marker of their variance. The girls who feel themselves to be boys assertively resist pink and the boys who feel themselves to be girls often embrace the color).

There seem to be other signifiers that go along with this pink=girl equation. For most little girls in this culture, princesses are an extension or expansion of the cult of pink, and horrifying as it is to contemplate commercialism's ability to colonize the mind, princesses represent the apogee of all that is desirable for the little girls already in their pink phase. One cannot just dismiss the world of the princess culture, nor assume it is an invention of the Disney conglomerate. In fact, it is most likely that the popularity of all things princess, so dearly embraced by little girls under 5, has to do with something developmental, and likely less to do with consumerism per se.

So for the little people for whom pink has already become a religion, a "logical" extension or expansion of the concept, the next step, as it were, seems to be the princess. For many children deep in the grips of girl culture, no longer does everything have to be literally pink, as long as it can reference "princess." This in turn is a kind of symbolic embodiment of something little girls seem to passionately want to identify with. What then is that something ?

It is this preoccupation with princess culture, coming as it does in a certain developmental window, that the photographer Blake Fitch has lovingly witnessed in a group of photographs entitled "Dress Rehearsal.".

Her photographs of little girls dressed up in shimmering royal regalia have a dignity and solemnity and shed some light on the indisputable power of the princess in early girlhood.

These pictures of little girls in favorite costumes, so comfortable, powerful yet natural all at once, bring to mind tiny and more wholesomely assertive variants of the reigning females on Game of Thrones, or the aristocratic inhabitants of Downton Abbey; females who rule.

The little girls in Fitch's portraits are hardly pawns, manipulated and exploited by consumerism. Quite the contrary. The princess persona seems to highlight these little girls' beauty and individuality, and to map onto something about their developing identities that is just the opposite of weak and vulnerable. Indeed these photographs seem to offer a clue about what little girls may be after when they insist on wearing what some parents fear my be the very symbols of female oppression. We have to assume that apparel that makes so many little girls feel so good, so complete, and so empowered must have a representational significance that calls out for understanding, not simply compliance or condemnation.

Blake Fitch's photographs seem to offer us a portal into the mind of the little girl as she struggles to embody and understand her femaleness. In clinging to pink and princess culture, perhaps a girl is celebrating and acknowledging a variety of things: her gendered body, her generative capacities, her ability to captivate and mesmerize (as all children can) as well as her place in the surrounding culture. Of course these questions and struggles map onto the gendered symbols of the surrounding culture; it's a kind of a public language. Banal as they may be, these are common symbols, readable and unambiguous. Concrete and recognizable, they are what is available to work with for a small child, an accessible visual iconography. If we simply condemn commercialism and its takeover of little girls' minds, we are not catching onto something important. So many parents valiantly try to steer their daughters away from the tyranny of Disney princesses, but as many who have tried know, it can be a losing battle. My daughter, despite every effort to have it be otherwise, refused items like an adorable green dress covered with images of tiny gardening tools or sophisticated navy blue velvet for special occasions. Pants? Forget about it. Her ideal clothing (including sleepwear and underwear) had to depict or represent Ariel the Mermaid; fortunately she stopped short of wanting a green iridescent tail. Why Ariel? Perhaps because she had red hair like my child. A recent nursery schooler I worked with was at the top of her game when wearing a long artificial pony tail marketed as that of Elsa, the protagonist of Frozen. The specific princess may be a personal preference, but it is the notion of someone being the beautiful heroine of her own story that carries the day. I guess we can't argue with that.

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Despite all efforts to empower little girls with more gender neutral or less commercial preoccupations, many little girls insist on buying and wearing clothing and accessories that are very pink, princess oriented and very much a part of consumer culture. What is this all about?

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This video shows some statistics that were found in the Disney Princess movies. They found that from the early films, the females were complimented much more on their looks rather than skill. There has been improvement in regards to the appearance bias they so regularly include in their films, but Disney has a lot of work to do.

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Researchers have found that princesses in Disney movies don't talk as much as you'd expect.

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This short clip explains the result of studies performed on young girls and boys. It explains how little girls are more likely to adopt the "Princess" behaviours, which in turn prohibits them from much more interactive experiences.

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Is Disney Princess Culture Hurting Young Girls?

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In every classic Disney Princess story, there is always a woman who needs saving. Luckily a man is there to help. These stories enforce the mentality that girls need a man to protect and save them and that having their own "Prince" is necessary for a happy life.

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Not only does Disney influence how girls and women should look, but also how we should behave. A lot of the classic Disney princesses exhibit passive behaviours and encourages its viewers to be kind to others no matter how they mistreat you. In essence Disney implies to little girls that they should not stand up for themselves. Luckily, viewers have caught on to this ridiculous ideology and promote quite the opposite as can be seen in the following image.

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Here are a variety of Disney's most iconic princesses. Although they appear to be of different origins, they are all quite thin. Their body types are almost identical. Including a thin waste, elongated legs, slender arms, and tiny frame.