Prettily Ever After

Image from The Artifice

The original Disney Princess movies are notorious for putting forth a standard of beauty that I, for one, certainly could never meet just because of the fact that I’m not white. Jasmine serves as the token POC princess of the original 6, but even then her skin is very light. I discuss my feelings towards Jasmine in Differently Ever After. Along with their fair skin comes a slimmed waist, sloped noses, doe-like eyes, and melodic voices. Considering these are drawn animations, it’s hard to believe that any can possess this made up beauty standard that Disney has set. I mean, even Ariel, one of the princesses herself, had to physically change her body so that she could be with her prince and acquire her happily ever after. With her red hair, lack of legs, and lack of a dress, Ariel seems to take the cake for diversity after Jasmine does.

The Little Mermaid went deeper into this theme of beauty standards than the other movies did. It largely dealt with what an ideal body type looks like, and how changing ones body/appearance can let you be with a man or fit in.

Ariel has minimal makeup, long flowing red hair, and a slim body. Her small companions and pretty environment add to the goodness we associate with Ariel. Ursula has purple skin, a larger body, dramatic makeup/facial features, and short white hair. Ursula’s confident body language and demeanor suggest that she is very comfortable with her body, but her evil lair, scary-looking animals, and her overall villainization still create an inherent bad association with her body figure. Not only that, but I found that Ursula’s makeup was actually based off of drag queen Divine.

Though it should be a good thing that the LGBTQ+ community finally has representation, a bad association is still created with it because of her evil character, as stated before. A similar thing is done in Aladdin, where the villains are characters with darker skin and thicker accents, whereas the protagonists have lighter skin and American accents, thus creating another negative disposition to those of different cultures.

When her voice is being taken away from her, a green overlay is used. I think in this case, green first represents jealousy (probably from Ursula, who has the opposite features of Ariel and ends up using Ariel’s voice later in the movie). The green can also represent nature — her voice is something natural to her that she is giving up. The medium close up shows how scared she feels. When her fin is changing into legs, there is a yellow overlay. Yellow usually represents happiness, yet the wide shot showing her struggling suggests otherwise. The glowing gold-ish outline around her legs shows that she is receiving something new

Mirrors are often used to symbolize truth. In this case, we see that Ursula’s soul is in the body of this woman on land; she changed the way she looks in the eyes of others in order to fit in, but her personality still lies within.

In the first scene, Ariel is giving up something that is a natural, beautiful part of her, in exchange for something shiny and new that will let her get her man. As a whole, this scene is emphasizing the idea that ideal beauty is pain — though this process is hurting her, she will be happy when she’s finally able to be with her man. Similarly, the second shot shows that Ursula too had to change her natural self in order to be desired by the prince in the human world. As someone who does not fit in to society’s (or at least Disney’s) apparent beauty standard, most simply because I am not white, I was being taught that it’s okay to change my body for a man, to be “normal”. And though it’s possible to change a face, weight, nose, etc., it’s not really possible to change the color of ones skin. And it shouldn’t need to be something wanted. I’ve grown up knowing that I should never change the way I look in order to please someone else, because “I am beautiful just the way I am.” Though I have done my best to internalize this notion, that doesn’t mean I still don’t feel slightly lesser than at times, that I should want to try and change the way I look — even if no one realistically in my life has ever felt that way towards me. Again, this feeling is something that I haven’t been able to shake, despite no one in my life (asides from media…) telling me otherwise.

Work Cited:

The Little Mermaid. Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, Walt Disney, 1989. Disney Plus.