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TikTok and YouTube have showcased some of the most heartwarming reactions to this casting choice, despite all the hatred that's being spread by those who oppose it. Black girls seeing the trailer are astonished to see that Halle Bailey's Ariel looks just like them, with girls saying "She's black?" in awe as if they never could've expected it. Other girls are saying exactly that, with comments of "She's like me!" being heard time and time again. One young woman is even captured crying with joy, as the only other time black women have seen themselves in a Disney princess was with Tiana (who was only released in 2009). Videos like this have been changing peoples minds, and helping people understand that this change can only bring positivity, and that it gives underrepresented women something new to relate to.

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Many people on the internet have been commenting that this casting choice is ruining their childhoods, or impacting the story of Ariel in some major way. Yet, Ariel's race is completely irrelevant to her story. Unless she is turning into seafoam, her whiteness was irrelevant in the first movie as the main plot point was that she was half fish and lost her voice. That could have happened to anyone. However, the same does not go for Jasmine, Mulan, Tiana, Pocahontas, and Moana, as they're all representing real-world cultures and experiences that are heavily tied to their race.

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Only 19 out of Disney's 61 feature films primarily feature a person of color as of April 2023, and only 5 of Disney's 14 official princesses are women of color (Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, and Moana, in chronological order). And since the focus of this is Disney Princesses of color, it's even more important to note that they've only started being released as of 1992- starting with Aladdin.

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Starting with the problems in Aladdin, 1992

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Starting with the problems in Aladdin, 1992

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That's right- Disney's first princess of color was only released in 1992, despite the company's existence for a full sixty-eight years prior. It was filled with harmful stereotypes about middle eastern people, and both Aladdin and Jasmine are noted to be strangely Eurocentric in looks and American in attitude. The only character we see in the movie who is distinctly middle eastern is the villain, with Jafar sporting a heavy accent and easily recognizable middle eastern garb.

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Mermaids as a myth are given origin credit to Africa, with the legend of Mami Wata, who was a water spirit described very similarly to the mermaids we know today. She's described as having a female upper half, and depending on the culture discussing her, a fish or serpent lower half.

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The origins of the Ariel myth are attributed to Hans Christian Anderson, hundreds of years after the first known discussions of Mami Wata, and the descriptors of her in this story are sparse. The most descriptive he gets about Ariel is that "her skin was as soft and tender as a rose petal, and her eyes were as blue as the deep sea, but like all the others she had no feet." At one point she is described as white, but this was due to her quite literally being comprised of sea foam.

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Disney's Issue Featuring Princesses of Color

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Disney's Issue Featuring Princesses of Color

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Despite the fact that Disney has gotten better with releasing strong women of color as their leads (such as Moana and Raya), there are still... issues. Tiana spends over half her movie as a frog (only 40 total minutes of screen time, 23 as a frog, 17 as a human being). Pocahontas is heavily role constrained, starting off strong and ending in a very stereotypic female script, which causes the movie to fall flat for those looking for a strong lead. Mulan, released in 1998, is a better representation but is also notably the first movie in which a princess is strong throughout the entire movie. Worrying!